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THE 


RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 













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THE 


ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION 


AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE 

Religion of Ancient Egypt 


BY 

F*. LE PAGE RENOUF 
Ji 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
743 & 745 Broadway 









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-#- 

GRANT & FAIRES, 

Printers and Electrotypers, 

420 LIBRARY ST., PHILA. 
-$- 


By Traniftr 
D, C. Public Library 

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JUN 7 1938 

















l)u mij tear Upfe, 

IN GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE 

OF OUR JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND 

WHOSE ANCIENT RELIGION 

IS HERE VERY IMPERFECTLY DESCRIBED. 



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CONTENTS. 


LECTURE I. 


THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ANCIENT 
EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


Early Christians on the Egyptian worship . 
Heathen writers on the same subject 
How far can such evidence be relied upon . 
Modern attempts at investigation 
Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing 
Dr. Young 
Champollion . 

His successors .... 
Recovery of the ancient language . 
Publication of Egyptian texts 
Most of the texts are of a religious nature . 


PAGE 

1 

2 
5 
9 

ii 

13 

14 

19 

20 
2j 
27 


LECTURE II. 

ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN 
CIVILIZATION. 

Egyptian chronology depends upon monuments recording con¬ 


temporary facts ... . . . 33 

Monuments mentioning the year of a reign ... 34 

Monuments furnishing evidence of a succession of reigns . . 35 

Royal lists and their verification by the monuments . . 38 

Royal list of Abydos ...... 39 

Evidence of the reality of sovereigns named ... 40 

Omissions of this list....... 42 



Vlll 


CONTENTS. 


Genealogies 

Manetho ....... 

Absolute dates ....... 

Egyptian monarchy anterior to 3000 B. C. . . . 

Pre-historic antiquity of human race in Egypt . 

Egyptian ethnology ...... 

Language . . . . 

Art ........ 

Moral Code ....... 

Castes 

Monogamy 

LECTURE III. 

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


Identity of the religious institutions from first to last 
Temples . . . . . 

Triads and enneads ...... 

Local character of Egyptian worship . . . 

The deities innumerable ... 

Mean notions concerning these deities . 

Simplification of the list ..... 

Is the religion really monotheistic? 

Evidences as to the meaning of the word Nutar 
The Power ...... 

The Powers , . . . . . 

Myth and legend ...... 

Ra and his family ...... 

Osiris and his family ..... 

Horus ....... 

Set. 

Thoth ....... 

The reign of Law ..... 

LECTURE IV. 

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 

Sepulchral rites . . , 

The tombs and their inscriptions 

The ka or genius ...... 


PAGE 

48 

48 

49 

51 

52 
54 
56 
62 

73 

80 

81 


83 

84 
86 
87 

89 
39 

90 
92 
96 

104 

107 

108 

113 

114 
117 

119 

120 
123 


129 

132 

153 






CONTENTS. 


IX 


Souls, shadows, apparitions 

Possession 

Dreams 

Oaths . 

Angels 

Destiny 

The king’s divinity 


LECTURE V. 

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 

The Book of the Dead .... 

Beatification of the dead ..... 

The renewed existence “ as upon earth ’’ . 

Transformation ...... 

Identification with Osiris and other gods 

Amulets ....... 

Words of power ..... 

Moral doctrine ...... 

Other sacred books ..... 


PAGE 

J 59 

160 

161 

163 

165 

165 

167 


179 
187 
. 187 

189 
. 191 

199 
. 200 

201 
- 208 


LECTURE VI. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS : HENOTHEISM, PANTHEISM 
AND MATERIALISM. 


Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys . 

Book of glorifying Osiris 
Book of the Breaths of Life . 

Rhind papyri .... 

Magical literature . . . . 

True notion of God . . „ 

Henotheism . . . . . 

Pantheism .... 

Materialism . 

Influence of Egyptian upon foreign thought 
Conclusion . . . . . 


211 
213 

215 

218 

219 
223 
226 
240 
249 
253 
259 


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LECTURE I. 


THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION RESPECTING 
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


The religion of ancient Egypt is known to us 
through authentic records of various kinds, extending 
through a period of not less than three thousand 
years. It may have been in existence for many 
centuries anterior to the earliest of the monuments 
which have been preserved. Its origin is a matter, 
not of history, but of speculation. Its last centuries 
coincide with the first centuries of the Christian reli¬ 
gion which gradually supplanted it. During this 
period the zoolatry, or worship of the sacred animals, 
was the feature which chiefly attracted the notice of 
the Christian apologists who have made any observa¬ 
tions upon the subject. 

Clement of Alexandria, one of the Early Christians 
most learned and philosophical of the ^ o ^ ip Esyptian 
Greek Fathers, introduces his account 
of the Egyptian worship in a chapter against the 




2 


LECTURE I. 


use or abuse of finery by Christian ladies. 1 He 
compares those ladies who elaborately- decorate their 
outside and neglect the soul, in which the image of 
God should be enshrined, to the Egyptians, who 
have magnificent temples, gleaming with gold, silver 
and electrum, and glittering with Indian and Ethi¬ 
opian gems. “Their shrines,” he continues, “are 
veiled with gold-embroidered hangings. But if you 
enter the penetralia of the enclosure, and, in haste 
to behold something better, seek the image that is 
the inhabitant of the temple, and if any priest of 
those that offer sacrifice there, looking grave and 
singing a paean in the Egyptian tongue, remove a 
little of the veil to show the god, he will furnish you 
with a hearty laugh at the object of worship. For 
the deity that is sought, to whom you have rushed, 
will not be found within, but a cat, or a crocodile, or 
a serpent, or some such beast, unworthy of the tem¬ 
ple, but quite worthy of a den, a hole or the dirt. 
The god of the Egyptians is revealed; a beast rolling 
on a purple couch.” 

TT . The language of Origen is very simi- 

ters on the same lar to that of Clement. That Christian 
subject* anc j Jewish controversialists should 

have felt the utmost disdain for the Egyptian worship 
is natural enough, but this disdain was fully shared 

1 Paedagog. iii. c. 2 . 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


3 


by many of the heathen contemporaries. “ You are 
never done,” says Clement to the latter, “ laughing 
every day of your lives at the Egyptians ” He then 
quotes a Greek philosopher, Xenophanes of Colo¬ 
phon, who tells the Egyptians, “ If you believe these 
brutes to be gods, do not mourn or bewail them; if 
you mourn or bewail them, do not any more regard 
them as gods.” The comic writers of Greece had 
already made themselves merry upon the subject. 
Antiphanes, one of the most fertile and celebrated 
Athenian poets of the Middle Comedy, jests at the 
cleverness of the Egyptians who consider the eel as 
equal to the gods. Anaxandrides, another famous 
Athenian comic writer, tells the Egyptians : “ I never 
could be your ally, for neither our customs nor our 
laws agree. They differ widely. You worship an ox, 
but I sacrifice him to the gods. You consider the eel 
a mighty demon; we think him by far the best of 
fish. You do not eat swine flesh, and I am partic¬ 
ularly fond of doing so. You worship a dog, but I 
thrash him whenever I catch him stealing meat. 
Here the law is, that integrity of all their members is 
required of priests; with you, it appears, they must be 
circumcised. You weep if you see a cat ailing, but I 
like to kill and skin him. A shrew-mouse is an ob¬ 
ject of great consideration with you, not of the least 
with me.” Timokles, in a play called “ The Egyp- 


4 


LECTURE /. 


tians,” asks, “ How is it possible for an ibis or a dog 
to save you? For when men have sinned against the 
gods whom all acknowledge, whom will the altar of a 
cat repel by its terrors ? ” 1 

Classical scholars are familiar with the Satire com¬ 
monly attributed to Juvenal: “ Who does not know 
what kinds of monsters demented Egypt worships? 
One part adores the crocodile, another quakes before 
the ibis gorged with serpents. The golden image of 
a sacred long-tailed ape glitters where the magic 
chords resound from mutilated Memnon, and ancient 
Thebes lies in ruin, with her hundred gates. There 
whole towns venerate cats, here a river fish, there a 
dog, but no one Diana. It is impiety to violate and 
break with the teeth the leek and onion. O holy 
races, to whom such deities as these are born in their 
gardens!” a 

It is not wonderful that, with such evidence before 
them, many writers should at the present day speak 
of the Egyptian religion as one of the lowest and 
grossest forms of nature-worship, as consisting in 
what is commonly called African fetishism, or at 
least as being based upon it. 

Yet the external aspect of a religion as presented 
to strangers is not often one that is to be trusted. 

1 These comedians are quoted in Athen.: Deipnos. vii. p. 299. 

8 Juvenal, Sat. xv. 1. Mr. Lewis’s translation. 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


5 


We have but to remember the accounts 
of the Jewish religion and of its history such ^tcebe 
which have been left us by heathen relied upon? 
writers, and the judgments which the most enlight- 
ened of these writers passed upon Christianity in the 
earliest and purest days of its existence. Christi¬ 
anity was not only considered as an exitiabilis super - 
stitio, but was popularly supposed to involve the 
worship of a brute animal. 1 Do you think the pre¬ 
judices of men holding such opinions would have 
been weakened had they accidentally heard of “ the 
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the 
world,” or read in the Apocalypse of the Lamb with 
seven horns and seven eyes who is the Lord of lords 
and King of kings, and represented as receiving the 
worship of the four beasts, the four-and-twenty 
elders, and innumerable angels ? 

A Roman soldier, according to the historian Dio- 
doros, incurred the furious wrath of an Egyptian 
village by the slaughter of a cat. But the fury of a 


1 The Christians were popularly supposed to worship the ass, but this 
worship was naturally imagined to have been derived from the Jews, 
who worshipped not only the ass, but the swine. “Judaeus licet et 
porcinum numen adoret;” Petronius Arbiter, p. 224: Berlin, 1842. See 
Gill’s Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic Writers of 
Antiquity , and an essay of Geiger (Juden u. Judenthum nach d. 
Auffassung d. Schriftsteller d. Alterthums) in the lllustrirte Monatshefte 
fur die gesammten Interessen des Judenthums of Oct. 1865, 


6 


LECTURE /. 


Mohammedan population may at this day be aroused 
by an attack upon its wild dogs; and there are, or 
till very lately were, numerous Christian populations 
which resented the slaughter of doves or pigeons as 
impious and sacrilegious. Yet neither Moslems nor 
Christians have ever worshipped dogs or pigeons. 1 

It is in the nature of things that persons living 
outside a religion, especially if they are not inclined 
to it, cannot understand it or its symbols unless their 
inquiries are conducted under conditions which are 
generally considered superfluous or wrong. Men 
are rarely conscious of the prejudices which really 
incapacitate them from forming impartial and true 
judgments on systems alien to their own habits of 
thought. And philosophers who may pride them¬ 
selves on their freedom from prejudice may yet fail 
to understand whole classes of psychological phe¬ 
nomena which are the result of religious practice, 
and are familiar to those alone to whom such prac¬ 
tice is habitual. 

1 Yet Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sociology , p. 354, after quoting a remark 
of Mr. McLennan that the dove is almost as great a god among the 
ancients as the serpent, says, “ that the still exant symbolism of Christi¬ 
anity shows us the surviving ^effect of the belief in the ghostly character 
of the dove.” N’est ce pas chercher midi h quatorze heures? Even if 
the schoolboy authorities on which Mr. McLellan relies were not ab¬ 
solutely worthless, surely the belief in the gospel narrative would be 
sufficient to account for the symbolism of the dove among populations 
who in their heathen condition had never heard of the dove as a divinity. 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


7 


There is distinct evidence that the absurdity which 
the Egyptian religion presented to strangers disap¬ 
peared on closer acquaintance with it. Philo, the 
philosophical Jew of Alexandria, tells us that for¬ 
eigners coming for the first time into Egypt knew not 
what to do for laughter at the divine beasts, but that 
the universal superstition finished by overpowering 
them also. Apollonios of Tyana, according to his 
biographer Philostratos, decidedly condemned the 
Egyptian system as absurd and ridiculous. But the 
form which his objections assume is quite inconsis¬ 
tent with the notion of fetishism. He takes it for 
granted that the beasts are not deities, but symbols of 
deity. “ If you place a hawk or an owl, or a wolf or 
a dog in your temples to represent Hermes, Athene 
or Apollon, the beasts and birds may derive dignity 
from such representations, but the gods will lose 
theirs.” “I think,” said Thespesion, “you slight our 
mode of worship before you have given it a fair ex¬ 
amination. For surely what we are speaking of is 
wise, if anything Egyptian is so; the ^Egyptians do 
not venture to give any form to their deities, they 
only give them in symbols which have an occult 
meaning that renders them more venerable.” Apol¬ 
lonios, smiling at this, said, “ O ye sages, great indeed 
is the advantage you have derived from the wisdom 
of Egyptians and Ethiopians, if you find anything 


8 


LECTURE /. 


worthy of your worship in a dog, an ibis or a goat; 
or if you think such creatures fit to represent your 

gods.If what the mind discovers couched under 

such symbolical figures is entitled to greater venera¬ 
tion, surely the condition of the gods in Egypt would 
be more highly respected if no statues whatever were 
erected to them, and if theology was treated in a 
different manner, with a little more wisdom and mys¬ 
tery.The mind forms to itself a something 

which it delineates better than what any art can do ; 
but in the present instance you have taken from the 
gods the very power of appearing beautiful either to 
the eye or to the understanding.” 1 

I do not quote this conversation as in any way 
deserving to be considered authentic, but only as 
evidence that the Egyptian worship of animals was 
considered even by grave opponents as symbolical, 
and not as pure fetishism. Celsus is quoted by Ori- 
gen as distinctly denying the worship by the Egyp 
tians of brute creatures of a day (j^tbcov e<pq/Ji$pctov). 
And some Christian Fathers even admit that the 
symbolical worship of animals denotes a higher stage 
of culture than the worship of inanimate images, 
stocks and stones, or of deities whose actions are 
inconsistent with the most elementary notions of 
morality. Porphyry 2 explains the animal worship 

1 Vit. Apollonii, vi. 19. 2 De Abstinentia, iv. c. 9. 




ANCIENT EGYPTIAN REL/GION. 9 

from a Pantheistic point of view. All living creatures 
in their degree partake of the Divine essence, and 
“ under the semblances of animals the Egyptians 
worship the universal power which the gods have 
revealed in the various forms of living nature.” 

After all, the religion of the Egyptians 

& Modem At- 

was not confined to the worship of the tempts at investi- 

sacred animals. Herodotos, Plato and gatlon ‘ 
other classical writers, mention Amon, Osiris, Isis, 
Thoth, Neith and other divinities; and the belief in 
the soul’s immortality is not only decidedly ascribed 
to the Egyptians, but is said to have been first taught 
by them. What relations did the various parts of this 
religion bear to each other? Was the religion in its 
later ages identical with the primitive religion of the 
country ? Had there been advance or retrogression ? 
The solution of these and many other obvious ques¬ 
tions was quite impossible until very recently. The 
learned Briicker, in his Critical History of Philosophy, 
and Jablonski, in his Pantheon Aegyptiacum, have 
with indefatigable industry put together all the evi¬ 
dence that can be found in Greek and Latin writers. 
But they had no means of testing this evidence. No 
history can be learnt with certainty except from evi¬ 
dence contemporaneous with the events recorded; no 
religion can be studied with profit except in the very 
words of its own votaries. But the knowledge of the 


LECTURE /. 


10 

Egyptian language had not only actually perished, 
but the key to the decipherment of its writings was 
supposed to be irrecoverably lost. The hieroglyphic 
characters, consisting of representations of the sun, 
moon, animals, plants and other objects, either natural 
of artificial, which are painted or sculptured upon so 
many Egyptian monuments, were indeed looked upon 
as symbols under which the mysteries of the religion 
had been concealed from the vulgar, and several 
attempts were made to explain them. All these 
efforts, however, were destitute of any scientific 
basis. The most elaborate attempts proceeded from 
the learned Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, who is not 
without merit as one of the restorers of Coptic; but 
his enormous folios upon hieroglyphic inscriptions are 
mere memorials of a frightful amount of time and 
thought elaborately wasted. Every hieroglyphic sign 
was supposed to represent an idea; and groups which 
we now know to stand for the names and titles of the 
Roman emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, are 
converted into long sentences of mystical rubbish. 
Even at the beginning of the present century, the 
Chevalier Palin indulged in dreams not unworthy of 
Athanasius Kircher. Dr. Birch has briefly described 
his views as follows. He “ did not hesitate to assert 
that it was only necessary to translate the Psalms of 
David into Chinese, and write them in the ancient 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. II 

characters of that language, in order to reproduce the 
Egyptian papyri, and that these contained many 
Biblical books.” 

Spurious monuments served the purposes of these 
interpreters quite as well as genuine ones. In the 
“ Isiac table ” Kircher discovered a variety of sacred 
mysteries favourable to Christianity; Pegnorius read 
in it precepts of moral and political wisdom. Another 
critic (Jablonski) considered it as a calendar of festi¬ 
vals; while a fourth attempted to persuade the learned 
world that “ these characters described the properties 
and use of the magnet, and of the mariner’s com¬ 
pass.” 

The discovery of the Rosetta stone 

Decipherment of 

put an end to all this guess-work. Most Hieroglyphic 
of you have probably seen this stone in Wnting ' 
the British Museum. It is a tablet of black basalt, 
about three feet long by about two and a half wide, 
and was erected in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, 
193 years before Christ. The inscriptions upon it are 
in three distinct characters, the third of which is 
Greek. The Greek text consists of a decree in hon¬ 
our of the king, and it is expressly stated in the last 
line that this decree is to be engraved on the tablet, 
ro?c ts lepotc xat if'/copiotc xat IXXvjvtxdtz ypdppaatv, “ in 
the sacred characters, in the vernacular and in Greek. 
The tablet is unfortunately mutilated, great part of 


12 


LECTURE I. 


the hieroglyphic portion is lost, and so is the end 
Greek. Fifteen lines of the enchorial or (as it is now 
generally called) demotic part have lost their first let¬ 
ters or words. 

The conditions of the problem to be solved were 
now of a very definite kind. The inquirer, instead of 
guessing at the sense of the hieroglyphic text, had the 
sense supplied to him. His problem lay in dividing 
the hieroglyphic text into groups or words corres¬ 
ponding to the Greek words. The problem would be 
completely solved if each Egyptian group were suc¬ 
cessfully analyzed and read, the verification of the 
result being found in the facility of reading and inter¬ 
preting other texts by means of the alphabet and vo¬ 
cabulary thus obtained. 

Several of the most eminent scholars in Europe 
attempted the problem, and some of them even with 
partial success. The great orientalist Silvestre de 
Sacy determined the demotic groups corresponding 
to Ptolemy, Berenike, Alexander and other proper 
names; and the Swedish scholar Akerblad already, 
in the year 1802, even drew up a phonetic alphabet 
of the demotic characters, which is remarkably cor¬ 
rect as far as it goes. The complete key to the deci¬ 
pherment of Egyptian was, however, not revealed to 
the world till the publication of Champollion’s letter 
to M. Dacier in the September of 1822. 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 13 

It is even to this day a common habit of English¬ 
men to couple the name of their coun¬ 
tryman Dr. Thomas Young with that Dr * Young - 
of Champollion, as sharing with him the glory of this 
discovery. No person who knows anything of Egyp¬ 
tian philology can countenance so gross an error. 
Dr. Young was indeed a man of extraordinary genius, 
but the true direction of it was long unrecognized by 
those very countrymen of his who ridiculously put 
him forward as a rival of Champollion. “ It fell to 
his lot,” as Professor Tyndall has said, “ to discover 
facts in Optics which Newton’s theory was incompe¬ 
tent to explain; and he finally succeeded in placing 
on an immovable basis the Undulatory Theory of 
Light.” Helmholtz, a kindred genius, thus speaks 
of him: “ His was one of the most profound minds 
that the world has ever seen.” But it is not true 
that he discovered the key to the decipherment of 
hieroglyphics, or even that his labours assisted Cham¬ 
pollion in the discovery. When the key was once 
discovered and recognized as the true one, it was 
found that one or two of Young’s results were cor¬ 
rect. But there was nothing in his method or theory 
by which he or any one else could distinguish be¬ 
tween his right and his wrong results, or which could 
lead him or any one else a single step in advance. 
Young was certainly right in assuming that the first 


14 


LECTURE I. 


two signs in the hieroglyphic name of Ptolemy 1 were 
P and T, but his next step was a failure, and so was 
the next after that. He did not succeed in analyzing 
this royal name or that of Berenike. All his other 
attempts were simple failures. “ He mistook Auto- 
krator for Arsinoe, and Caesar for Euergetes.” “ His 
translations,” says Dr. Birch, “are below criticism, 
being as unfounded as those of Kircher.” Besides 
being unable to identify more than a very few alpha¬ 
betic characters, he failed to recognize the nature of 
determinatives, no less an essential part of the key 
than the phonetic. 

Champollion’s discovery was of a 
Champoihon. ver y different nature. Besides the two 

kinds of Egyptian characters which are used on the 
Rosetta stone, there is a third, commonly called the 
hieratic. The hieroglyphic characters, with their 
accurately elaborate designs of animals, plants and 
other objects, are very suitable for monumental in¬ 
scriptions, but very unsuitable for the ordinary pur¬ 
poses of life; and the Egyptians had from the earliest 
times used a tachygraphic or cursive character which 
is a rough and abridged form of the hieroglyphic. 
The stones of the great Pyramid bear notes upon 


1 That the oval rings contained royal names was first pointed out by 
the Danish scholar Zoega, who was also the first in modem times to 
assert that some hieroglyphic characters were phonetic. 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


15 


them in this character which were already written in 
the quarry. At a much more recent period (some 
seven centuries before Christ), the character was still 
further abridged and debased, and assumed the form 
now called demotic, and this is the second character 
on the Rosetta stone. A great many documents in 
our museums are written in this character. Long 
before he suspected the real nature of Egyptian writ¬ 
ing, Champollion had patiently studied the relations 
between its three different kinds, and had discovered 
the essential identity of the three, demotic being a 
debasement of the hieratic, the hieratic a debasement 
of the hieroglyphic. Through M. Dacier he had pre¬ 
sented two dissertations to the French Academie des 
Sciences, one on the hieratic and a second on the 
demotic character. His enemy Klaproth asserts that 
he suppressed the dissertation on the hieratic char¬ 
acter for fear of its telling tales against him, and 
showing his need of Young’s guidance. I do not 
know that it is true that Champollion tried to sup¬ 
press this “ Memoire; ” but if he did, it surely was not 
for the purpose malignantly asserted by Klaproth and 
ignorantly repeated in this country. The dissertation 
in question is a very excellent work, chiefly consisting 
in plates , wherein passages of the Book of the Dead 
written in hieroglyphics are placed side by side with 
the same passages copied from hieratic manuscripts, 


LECTURE I. 


16 

and the identity is made apparent to the most un¬ 
learned eye. And if, as Klaproth asserts, Champol- 
lion had wished to destroy all trace of certain 
passages which occur in his text, he would certainly 
not have repeated them, as he does, in his letter to 
M. Dacier. But the most important step in his pro¬ 
gress was discovering the identity of certain demotic 
characters, the alphabetic nature of which had been 
demonstrated by Akerblad, with the corresponding 
hieratic ones, and consequently with their hierogly¬ 
phic originals. If any one has a right to be named 
in conjunction with Champollion, it is not Young, but 
Akerblad, to whom he does full justice (as he does 
indeed to Young himself) at the very beginning of 
his letter to M. Dacier. But in 1822, 1 Champollion 

1 That Champollion never thought of hieroglyphic characters as pho¬ 
netic till after Young’s publication, is one of Klaproth’s unscrupulous 
assertions which has been thoughtlessly repeated by some who should 
have known better. It has been refuted by M. Champollion-Figeac, 
who in the Revue Archeologique of 1856, 1857 and 1878, has produced 
abundance of evidence from his brother’s writings between the years 
1808 and 1814. In his Memoire sur les Ecritures Egyptiennes , read on 
Aug. 7, 1810, before the Society of Sciences and Arts of Grenoble, 
Champollion strongly insists upon the necessity of phonetism, for other¬ 
wise how could foreign names, for which no symbolism existed, be ex¬ 
pressed in writing ? “ L’inscription de "Rosette presents les noms Grecs 
de PtolSmee, Berenice, Arsinoe, Pyrrha, d'Areia, de Diogenes, d’A£te9, 
d’Alexandre, etc.; ils ne pouvaient etre exprim^s dans la partie hiero» 
glyphique de ce monument, si ses hieroglyphes n’avaient, comma nouv 
l’avons dit, la faculte de produire des sons.” 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


I7 


had not only one bilingual inscription before him, but 
two, the obelisk of Philse having been found, with an 
Egyptian inscription and also a Greek one containing 
the name of Cleopatra, which offered special facility 
for decipherment, two of the letters in it being alike, 
and others being the same as in the name of Ptolemy. 
But in discussing this question it must not be forgot¬ 
ten that the key to hieroglyphic decipherment does 
not consist in recognizing the phonetic nature of this 
or that sign, but in the knowledge of the simultaneous 
use of both phonetic and ideographic signs, not only 
in every line, but in nearly every word, and of the 
law of this use. And neither Akerblad, nor, since the 
language had ceased to be spoken, had any one else 
before Champollion a notion of this. 

The truth of Champollion’s alphabet was demon 
strated by its enabling one to read the name not onl 
of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, but of all the Persian, 
Greek and Roman sovereigns of the country. And, 
what was far more important still, the meanings of 
many hieroglyphic groups, on being read according 
to his system, were immediately known from the 
Coptic vocabulary, Champollion’s hypothesis that the 
old Egyptian language was identical with Coptic, 
though a very imperfect one, and productive even at 
the present day of many errors among those who 
discard it, was not fatally wrong, for Coptic is in fact 


i8 


LECTURE I. 


a later stage of the language in which the hiero¬ 
glyphic texts are written, and the vocabulary of the 
latter is full of words which are as intelligible to the 
Coptic scholar as the infinitives of Latin verbs are to 
a mere Italian scholar. The remaining years of his 
short life were spent in copying, studying and inter¬ 
preting Egyptian texts. The amount of work accom¬ 
plished by him in eight years is almost incredible. 
He not only laid the foundations of a Grammar and 
Dictionary, but illustrated the history and religion of 
ancient Egypt by the translations and analyses of 
short but authentic texts, opening an entirely new 
world to the historical student, and convincingly pro¬ 
ving that scarcely a single page which had hitherto 
been written upon Egyptian history or religion de¬ 
served the least credit. A splendid work which he 
had begun on the Egyptian Pantheon was even dis¬ 
continued in consequence of the Egyptian religion 
which he was perpetually discovering. 

During his lifetime, Champollion had many oppo¬ 
nents and detractors, but not a single person can be 
named who in the slightest degree contributed to the 
modification or developement of his views. What¬ 
ever corrections he adopted resulted from his own 
studies. His immediate disciples did not advance a 
step beyond what they learnt from him. One of 
them, Salvolini, was guilty of the infamous wicked- 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


J 9 


ness, after his master’s death, of using the manu¬ 
scripts of the latter for the purpose of 'winning glory 
for himself at the expense of the generous friend who 
had lent him his most valuable papers. It was not 
till 1837, several years after the death of Champol- 
lion, that his philological system was subjected to a 
thoroughly scientific criticism by Dr. Lepsius in his 
Letter to Rosellini, in which the obviously erroneous 
portions of the system were eliminated, the relations 
between the Coptic and the old Egyptian languages 
were set in a truer light, and a more accurate method 
of transcription was adopted. 

For a good many years after this, 

J J His successors. 

Egyptian archaeology was chiefly cul¬ 
tivated by dilettanti , whose knowledge of the lan¬ 
guage seldom extended beyond the decipherment of 
royal names. Whole systems of Egyptian chro¬ 
nology have been devised by men incapable of 
reading and understanding a single line of Egyptian. 
Till 1850, the only genuine scholars who can be 
mentioned in addition to Lepsius, are Mr. Birch and 
Dr. Hincks in this country, M. Emmanuel de Rouge 
in France, and Dr. Brugsch (then a very young man) 
in Germany. But every one of these was a scholar, 
of more than average ability, and has left his mark 
for ever upon the science. The important discove¬ 
ries of M. Mariette belong to the next period, as also 


20 


LECTURE /. 


do the first works of M. Chabas and Mr. Goodwin, 
two scholars whose translations of some of the most 
difficult texts in the language caused the study of it 
to advance with gigantic strides. Since i860, and 
particularly since the foundation in 1863 at Berlin of 
a journal in which everything connected with the 
language or archaeology of ancient Egypt might 
be discussed, the number of highly distinguished 
scholars has greatly increased. A very valuable 
journal of the same kind was founded in Paris in the 
year 1872. The names of Dumichen, Lauth, Ebers, 
Stern, Eisenlohr, Wiedeman, Bergman and Reinisch 
in Germany and Austria, Pleyte in Holland, Lieb- 
lein in Sweden, Golenischeff in Russia, Deveria, J. de 
Rouge, Horrack, Maspero, Lefebure, Pierret, Gre- 
baut, Robiou, Baillet and Rochemonteix in France, 
Naville at Geneva, Rossi, Szedlo and Schiaparelli in 
Italy, are authorities familiar to every Egyptologist. 
To these I must add Canon Cook and Professor 
Lushington in this country. 

It is not without a melancholy feel- 

am^entlanguage. in S that 1 enumerate these names 
(many of them belonging to dear and 
valued friends), for the hand of death has already 
thinned our ranks, and some of us are growing old 
and disabled. The spell, however, is broken ; the 
language of ancient Egypt has really been recovered 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


21 


—slowly, it is true, and step by step. The decipher¬ 
ment of a language does not at once put us in pos¬ 
session of a language. The ancient Etruscan writings 
are read with ease, but they are as unintelligible as 
ever. The relationship between Coptic and Egyp¬ 
tian happily enabled Champollion to find the mean-^ 
ings of many words and the general sense of entire 
inscriptions. But the old Egyptian vocabulary, be¬ 
sides representing an earlier stage of the language, is 
very much more extensive than the Coptic, and the 
greater part of the words which compose it had to be 
recovered, one after another, by an inductive process. 
The truth of the vocabulary which has thus gradually 
been built up is verified by its enabling to read and 
understand entire documents of every kind. This 
alone ought to be considered sufficient proof, for no 
imaginary vocabulary can possibly adapt itself to the 
needs of an indefinite number of texts. But sceptics 
who are incapacitated by their imperfect acquaintance 
with the processes of philological science from feel¬ 
ing the force of this proof, may at least be referred to 
the confirmation of our vocabulary by the bilingual 
inscription of Canopus. In 1866, Dr. Lepsius dis¬ 
covered a tablet at San, in Lower Egypt, of the same 
nature as the Rosetta stone; that is to say, contain¬ 
ing inscriptions in old Egyptian, demotic and Greek, 
but much more considerable in extent and quite 


22 


LECTURE I. 


perfect. The sense of this tablet, according to the 
vocabulary already received among Egyptologists, 
exactly agreed with that given by the Greek text. 
And the truth of the grammar is proved in the same 
manner. Already in i860, M. de Rouge declared 
that there was no kind of Egyptian text the transla¬ 
tion of which might not be undertaken if only the 
necessary pains were employed. We are now able 
to read and understand not only the splendid and 
accurate texts of the public inscriptions, but the 
wretched scrawls of manuscripts in the cursive cha¬ 
racter. And some scholars—Mr. Goodwin, for in¬ 
stance, and Mr. Chabas, and before them Dr. Birch 
and M. de Rouge—have successfully translated 
texts so frightfully mutilated that in many places 
only fragments of letters were visible. But their 
familiarity with the cursive character enabled them 
to restore the text with an accuracy of which 
no competent critic can entertain a doubt. When 
I speak of our being able to read and compre¬ 
hend the language, you will not understand me as 
implying that all Egyptologists are equally learned 
and skilful. Nor are all Egyptian texts equally 
easy of translation. 1 As in all languages, some are 

1 Other questions than those of a purely philological nature often arise 
in reference to the texts translated. I do not quarrel with the transla¬ 
tions given by M. de Rouge and other scholars ofihe great texts describ- 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


23 


very easy and others extremely difficult. There is 
one long and most interesting document, of which I 
shall have occasion to speak later on, which will, I 
fear, long continue to baffle the efforts of translators. 

The progress of study was greatly 
retarded at first by the difficulty of 
obtaining authentic copies of Egyptian 
texts. Almost all the old copies, not even excepting 
those made by Belzoni, are absolutely worthless. 
Science is insatiate, and its wants can never be 
adequately supplied, yet much has been done, both 
through the unassisted efforts of private individuals 
and through the munificence of governments and 
public bodies. The collection of published Egyptian 
texts which can be relied upon is now very consider¬ 
able. To the plates contained in the Description de 
l’Egypte published in 1809 by the French govern¬ 
ment, as the result of a great scientific expedition, 

ing the invasion of Egypt in the time of Seti II. But I have always 
considered the identification of the foreign invaders with the Achaeans, 
Tyrrhenians, Sardinians and Sicilians, as in the highest degree improb¬ 
able. Nor do I believe that the Danai or the Pelasgi have been really 
identified under hieroglyphic spelling. When we reflect that Deutsch¬ 
land is called Allemagne in French and Germany in English, that the 
people called Dutch by us are called Hollandais by the French, that the 
Greeks only knew themselves as Hellenes, that the name Egypt was un¬ 
known to the inhabitants of that country, and that its real name, Kamit , 
was unknown to Greeks and Romans, we should be very cautious in 
identifying names on the mere strength of similarity in sound. 


24 • 


LECTURE I. 


must be added the collections of Champollion, Rosel- 
lini and Prisse d’Avennes, Burton’s Excerpta Hiero- 
glyphica, Sharpe’s Egyptian Inscriptions, Dr. Lee- 
mans’s Monumens Egyptiens du Musee de Leide, 
Ungarelli’s Obelisks, the magnificent Denkmaeler of 
Lepsius, the Hieratic Papyri of the British Museum, 
and many other splendid publications bearing the 
names of Lepsius, Chabas, Bonomi, Rhind, Brugsch, 
Dumichen, Mariette Bey, E. de Rouge, Rossi and 
Pleyte, Naville, Ebers and Stern, Maspero, Guyesse, 
Golenischeff, Bergman, Wiedeman and others. Some 
of these costly works reproduce the original text in 
facsimile; in some of them the accuracy of the copy 
is secured by photography. 

But large as is the collection of these texts, it is 
but a fragment of the texts actually in existence. 
Mariette Bey has published four folio volumes of 
plates from the temple of Denderah alone, but he 
gives them only as a selection. To copy the whole 
would, he says, be the work of years. Dr. Dumichen 
has published another folio volume of texts of special 
interest, selected from the same temple, without inter¬ 
fering with those published by M. Mariette. Every 
square foot of the walls is in fact covered with picture 
or text. I had the pleasure of passing some time, one 
or two years ago, at Qurna, on the left bank of the 
Nile, near Thebes, with a great scholar, who had 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION 


*5 


spent much time in copying the inscriptions of a sin¬ 
gle tomb; but though he worked indefatigably and 
rapidly, he was compelled to come away leaving a 
great part of his intended work unaccomplished. 
Would that we might rely upon the zeal of future 
labourers for the completion of such tasks as the pre¬ 
sent generation is unable to perform ! Unfortunately 
the monuments are rapidly perishing, and there are 
no effectual means of arresting the progress of de¬ 
struction. The tombs are convenient abodes for Arab 
families, who destroy the paintings and inscriptions 
either by the dense smoke of their fires or by actually 
pulling down walls. I was taken to see the “ Lay of 
the Harper/’ one of the most interesting remains of 
„ Egyptian poetry, which was published a few years 
ago by Dr. Diimichen ; but we found the walls on 
which the poem was written a mere heap of ruins. 
But the vandalism of European and American travel¬ 
lers is most fatal to the monuments. There is, or 
rather was, a famous picture at Benihassan which was 
formerly thought to represent Joseph presenting his 
brethren to Pharaoh. An English lady has been 
heard to request her guide to cut out for her the face 
of Joseph. 

But this destruction in some form or other has 
been going on for centuries. Abd-el-Latif, a learned 
Arabian writer of the middle ages, tells us in his 
2 


26 


LECTURE /. 


description of Egypt that the ruins of Memphis in his 
time extended half a day’s journey in every direction, 
and that, in spite of the removal for building purposes 
of immense masses of materials, its ruins presented to 
the spectator a re-union of marvels sufficient to con¬ 
found the intelligence, and which the most eloquent 
man would vainly undertake to describe. He then 
proceeds to give a very intelligent account of these 
marvels, which must have been scarce less astounding 
than those still to be seen at Thebes. But of Mem¬ 
phis there is at present hardly a trace left. And 
other great cities known to ancient travellers have 
disappeared with their monuments. Mummy-cases 
and coffins with most interesting inscriptions have 
for centuries been used as fuel. And innumerable 
manuscripts have suffered the same fate. 

In speaking of our stock of information respecting 
the ancient world, Mr. Grote says that “ we possess 
only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a 
stranded vessel.” If this be true with reference to 
such a literature as that of Greece, with its immortal 
poets, historians, orators and philosophers, how im¬ 
measurably more true is it of Egypt! Yet if we only 
look to quantity, the stock of original and trustworthy 
materials actually in existence illustrative of the reli¬ 
gion of ancient Egypt, is more extensive than the 
corresponding materials extant for the religions of 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION 


27 


Palestine, Greece or Rome. Neither Romans nor 
Greeks have left any sacred books. They have left 
poetry of the highest order, but no psalms or hymns, 
litanies or prayers; as the Egyptians have so largely 
done. No people certainly were more remote than 
the Egyptians from the idea that religion could exist 
without outward forms of worship. In studying their 
religion, we have to deal, not with a mere sentiment, 
but with a vast and complicated system of beliefs and 
institutions, resulting from their view of man’s rela¬ 
tions to the unseen world. 

Of the many thousands of texts 

Most of the 

which have been rescued from destruc- Texts are of a 
tion and made accessible to us, there R^ 0118 Nature, 
are extremely few which do not bear directly upon 
the subject of the present Lectures. There are two 
reasons for this. The first is to be found in the fact 
that the Egyptians were among the most religious of 
the ancient nations. Religion in some form or other 
was dominant in every relation of their lives. One of 
the most extensive Egyptian works which has been 
recovered is the great medical papyrus published by 
Dr. Ebers. That work, however, though a medical 
one, and descending to minute details about cosmetics 
and even to receipts against vermin, is essentially a 
religious book. The medical prescriptions are subor¬ 
dinate to the prayers or religious observances which 


28 


LECTURE I. 


give them their efficacy. If we wish to keep clear of 
religion in studying Egyptian literature, we shall have 
to confine ourselves to mathematics. There is on the 
staircase of the British Museum a papyrus treating of 
various kinds of mathematical problems, and I confess 
that in studying it I was surprised to find it of so 
purely secular a character as it really is. It is only at 
the very end that we meet at last with a mention of 
prayers for fine weather and a high Nile. 

But the principal reason why most of the docu¬ 
ments which have come down to us are of a religious 
character is, that all the ancient monuments of Egypt 
have perished except some which were necessarily of 
a religious nature—the temples and the tombs. The 
palaces of kings and nobles have utterly disappeared. 
i Our knowledge of Egyptian civil architecture is de- 
V rived from paintings in the tombs. Many texts of 
historical interest have been preserved, but their 
original intention was not historical, but religious. 
For us, the royal texts of Karnak, Abydos and 
Saqara, are of historical value; but they have a purely 
religious meaning on the walls where they were found. 
We should in all probability never have recovered 
the Annals of Tehutimes III. except for the splendid 
donations to the god of Thebes which they commem¬ 
orate. All the objects in our museums and other 
collections which seem to belong to civil or domestic 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 


2 9 


life, have only been preserved by being buried in the 
tombs. On examining what appears to be a mere 
trinket, you will often find a prayer for the departed. 
And this is the case with the papyri, all of which 
would infallibly have perished had they not been de¬ 
posited in tombs, and by the deep dry sand of the 
desert been rendered inaccessible to external influ¬ 
ences. It is only accidentally that documents of a 
purely secular character have been preserved, and 
fragments of Greek and Coptic literature have in like 
manner been recovered from tombs. The informa¬ 
tion which we possess about Egyptian history is en¬ 
tirely derived from the public inscriptions on the 
walls of the temples, and accidental details contained 
in the funereal inscriptions of private individuals. 

The first step to be taken in the endeavour to ob¬ 
tain light out of these materials is classification, and 
the most essential kind of classification at starting, is 
that of the order of succession. We shall never un¬ 
derstand the development of the Egyptian, or of any 
other religion, if our ideas are uncertain as to the or¬ 
der in which the phenomena which represent it stand 
towards each other in reference to time. The specu¬ 
lations of the ablest men are sure to fail if their chro¬ 
nology is fatally wrong. I remember the time when 
men talked gravely and learnedly of reminiscences 
of primeval revelation respecting the Trinity and 


30 


LECTURE /. 


other Christian doctrines, as having been preserved, 
though in a very corrupt state, in the Hindu tradi¬ 
tions about Trimurti. Some, on the other hand, per¬ 
haps suspected that the Christian doctrine might 
have* been derived through some unknown channel 
from a Hindu source. It is now acknowledged by 
all scholars that the Hindu doctrine in question is 
extremely modern ; the first traces of it are to be 
sought more than fourteen hundred years, not before, 
but after, the Christian era. The work upon India 
of P. Von Bohlen used to be considered a decisive 
authority respecting the influence of Indian upon 
Egyptian culture. No such influence can any long¬ 
er be admitted. Many of you have probably read 
Mr. McLennan’s article on the Worship of Animals 
and Plants. In order to show that the ancient no¬ 
tions passed through what he calls the Totem stage, 
which he says must have been in pre-historic times, 
he appeals to the signs of the Zodiac. “ The Zodiac¬ 
al constellations figured on the porticos of Dendera 
and Esne in Egypt are/’ he says, “ of great anti¬ 
quity.” The authority for this statement is a passage 
from Chambers’ Encyclopedia, to the effect that 
“ Dupuis, in his Origine des Cultes , has, from a care¬ 
ful investigation of the position of these signs, and 
calculating precession at the usual rate, arrived at a 
conclusion that the earliest of them date from 4000 


ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 31 

b. c. M. Fourier, in his ( Reckerches sur la Sciencel 
makes the representation at Esne 1800 years older 
than M. Dupuis.” Mr. McLennan is here more than 
half a century behind his age. Every tourist on the 
Nile in possession of Murray’s Handbook, knows 
that both Dupuis and Fourier were ludicrously mis¬ 
taken. 1 The Zodiacal representations in question, far 
from being of great antiquity, belong to the very 
latest period of Egyptian workmanship ; they are not 
anterior to the Christian era or the Roman domi¬ 
nation ; they were borrowed from the Greeks, and 
were entirely unknown to the ancient Egyptians. 

It is not sufficient to be in possession of trust¬ 
worthy witnesses; it is also necessary to know the 
limit within which alone their evidence is really 
available. I am obliged, therefore, to say something 
about Egyptian chronology, especially as the current 
opinions on the subject are very vague and inaccu¬ 
rate. I shall not, however, detain you by entering 
into any of the questions which are still at issue 
between learned men who had given their attention 
to them, but will simply explain to you the nature of 
the undisputed evidence upon which we assign 
relative dates to the various periods of Egyptian civ- 

1 All Mr. McLennan’s statements about the ancient nations are based 
on equally worthless authorities. He goes for his facts to Bryant and to 
Lempriere’s Dictionary. 


32 


LECTURE I. 


ilization, and which imperatively demand that a very 
early date indeed should be assigned to the origin 
of that civilization. 


LECTURE II. 




ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN 
CIVILIZATION. 

( <&,. 

I promised to explain the kind, of 

evidence which compels us to, assign af/ Egyptian Chro " 


r depends 

very remote antiquity to Egyptian civi- upon monuments 
lization so remote indeed as to appear ^“pofafy^acts. 
simply fabulous to men whose studies 
of ancient history have been confined to Greece and 
Rome, and who know how very soon historical evi¬ 
dence fails at the distance of a few centuries from the 
Christian era. Such men are not unnaturally in¬ 
clined to suspect us of uncritically attaching import¬ 
ance to exaggerated or even fictitious numbers handed 
down by untrustworthy authorities. Such a suspi¬ 
cion is entirel^without foundation. There is not a 
single Egyptian** mominien? Kftowfkwhich in its bear- 
ings upon Ihronplogy, is Jiabfe to the charge of nu- 


IjVED 

1S N 

ion. ( The moniJbaents, as a 


33 


merical ex|gge 

X £. 0 , / 


rule, 




34 


LECTURE II. 


never speak of contemporary events. There are 
a few instances in which a temple built by an ancient 
sovereign is said to have been repaired or rebuilt by 
another, but the interval between the two sovereigns 
is unfortunately never stated. 

Although Mena is the first of the 

Monuments . , . t 

mentioning the Egyptian kings, and is repeatedly 

Year of a Reign, named, dates are never reckoned from 

his or from any other era, but are given by the year 

of the reigning king. This is never so high as to 

justify a doubt. We can certainly conceive the case 

of a forged inscription on a tombstone, saying that 

John Smith died on the 9th of September, 1876, or 

(were such the custom of the country) in the 39th 

year of Queen Victoria; but unless good reasons for 

rejecting such a statement are produced, the law of 

historical evidence compels us to admit it. Most of 

the documents upon which we rely for Egyptian 

chronology are of this simple nature, and no one who 

has seen the tombs or buildings from which they 

have been taken, can dream for an instant that these 

inscriptions are less trustworthy than those in an 

English churchyard. 

The manifest defect for chronological purposes of 
such inscriptions is, that the last' monumental year 
which happens to be preserved to us of a king is not 
necessarily the last of his reign. An error of several 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION 


35 


(perhaps of many) years is possible in each reign 
when there is no direct evidence to the contrary. 
But the error is at all events not on the side of exag¬ 
gerated numbers. J 

Still more important than the menu- Monuments fur . 

ments which mention the year of a nish ing Evidence 
, .... of a Succession of 

king, are those in which two or more Reigns< 
sovereigns of the same period are men¬ 
tioned, especially if their succession or other precise 
data are given. Such is the treaty made in the 
twenty-first of his reign between Rameses II. and the 
king of the Cheta, wherein Rameses II. calls himself 
the son of Seti I., who in his turn is called the son of 
Rameses I. 1 There is a very large number of inscrip¬ 
tions belonging to personages who have been born in 
one reign and died in another, or who have served 
several kings in succession. And the inscriptions of 
the same period naturally confirm one another, or 
supply details which were missing. 

Thus, to take the case of the eighteenth dynasty, 
the sepulchral inscription of Aahmes, the son of 
Abana, 2 gives the account of a naval officer who 
served three sovereigns one after the other,—Aahmes 
I., Amenhotep I. and Tehutimes I. (commonly called 
Thothmes or Thothmosis). His father, the same 
inscription tells us, served the king Sekenen-Ra. 

1 “ Records of the Past,” Vol. IV. p. 25. 3 Ibid. Vol. VI. p. 5. 


36 


LECTURE II. 


Another well-known inscription, now in the Louvre 
at Paris, 1 begins the tale of its hero in the reign of 
Aahmes I., and ends it in that of Tehutimes III. The 
tablet of Nebuaiu, now in the Museum at Bulaq, gives 
thanks to Tehutimes III., and his son Amenhotep II., 
who had honored Nebuaiu. King Amenhotep II., 
himself, on a tablet at Amada, speaks of Tehutimes 
III ., as his father. And a third and independent wit¬ 
ness, Amenemheb, 2 tells us that Tehutimes III., in 
whose service he was, died on the last day of the 
month Phamenoth, in the 54th year of his reign, and 
that he was succeeded by his son Amenhotep II. 
The entire succession of the dynasty is established on 
a large mass of evidence of the same kind, as may be 
seen at length in an excellent dissertation of Dr. 
Wiedeman. 3 And the chronology of other periods 
has been established in like manner. 

The most remarkable series of inscriptions which 
has been utilized for chronological purposes consists 
of the inscriptions relating to the Apis bulls, whose 
wonderful tombs were discovered by M. Mariette. 
One of these sacred animals was born in the twenty- 
eighth year of king Sheshonk III., lived twenty years, 

1 “ Records of the Past,” Vol. IV. p. 7. * Ibid. Vol. II. p. 59. 

8 “ Geschichte der achtzehnten agyptischen Dynastie bis zum Tode 
Tumes III.,’' in the Zeiischrift der Deutschen Morgcnldndischen Gesell- 
schaft, Bd. xxxi. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


37 


and died in the second year of king Pamai. Another 
Apis was born in the twenty-sixth year of Taharqa, 
and died in the twentieth year of Psammitichus I. A 
hundred and sixty-eight tablets in honour of this one 
Apis have been found, fifty-three of which are dated. 
Another Apis, born on the nineteenth day of the 
month Mechir, in the fifty-third year of Psammitichus 
I., lived sixteen years, seven months and seventeen 
days, and died on the sixth Paophi of the sixteenth 
year of Necho II. This bull was succeeded by 
another, born on the seventh Paophi of the sixteenth 
year of Necho II., lived seventeen years, six months 
and five days, and died on the twelfth day of 
the month Pharmuti, of the twelfth year of king 
Apries. 

As documents of this kind bring us down past the 
time of Cambyses and even into the Ptolemaic period, 
that is, into a period of well-ascertained chronology, 
we are able, by means of the Apis inscriptions alone, 
to go back from Cambyses to the first year of Tahar¬ 
qa, about seven hundred years before Christ, the 
limit of possible error being two or three years at the 
utmost. And with Taharqa (the Tirhaka of Scrip¬ 
ture), who was the last king of the twenty-fifth dynas¬ 
ty, begins, as Brugsch observes, the latest period of 
the history of the Pharaohs. 

The first kind of monuments which I have de- 


38 


LECTURE II. 


scribed is useful as furnishing the highest ascertain- 


Royal lists and 
their verification 
by the monu¬ 
ments. 


able monumental year of a reign; the 
second kind enables us besides to deter¬ 
mine the order of succession of reigns. 
Both these kinds of monuments are con¬ 


temporaneous with the persons and events mentioned 
upon them. But besides these, there are monuments 
giving long lists of sovereigns, all of whom cannot 
have been contemporaneous. Such are the famous 
tablets of Abydos, that of Saqara , 1 the chamber of 
Karnak, and some others. The royal hieratic canon 
of Turin (which is unfortunately in so mutilated a 
condition as practically to be of little use, and which 
enumerates many kings and gives the lengths of 
their reigns) is a document of the same historical 
character, at least from the point of view from which 
I am now looking at the matter . 2 In the chamber 
of Karnak, Tehutimes III., is represented as making 
an offering to sixty-one of his royal predecessors, 
whose names are given. At Abydos, Seti I., to- 

1 Mariette, “ La table de Saqqarah,’’ in the Revue Archhologique , 
1864, II. 169. 

2 It differs from the rest in being a professedly historical document. 
The others may rather be compared to lists of saints in Catholic litanies. 
That royal names should occur in this way in the prayers of private 
persons, as in the tablet of Saqara. is not wonderful, when we learn fiom 
the Book of the Dead (ch. 136, b. 14) that the pious dead are in the 
company of the kings of the North and of the South. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


39 


gether with his son Rameses, then heir-apparent, 
offers incense to no less than seventy-six kings . 1 

You will at once understand the im¬ 
portance of such a monument, if it can Abydos 1 ^ ° f 
be relied upon, when I remind you 
that the Israelites in bondage are said to have been 
employed in building the treasure cities (as the He¬ 
brew meschenoth is commonly translated), or rather 
sanctuaries, of Pithom and Rameses. It may be 
considered absolutely certain that no place in Egypt 
ever had the name of Rameses till the appearance of 
the celebrated hero of the name, who is actually re¬ 
presented on this monument as the son and heir- 
apparent of Seti I. The name of the place is as 
significant as the names of Alexandria, Antioch, 
Ptolemais, Seleucia, Washington or Napoleonville. 
The name of Rameses is a very peculiar one, the lat¬ 
ter part of it consisting of the reduplicated form of 
the verb mes , not of the simple form, like the names 
Rames, Aahmes, Tehutimes, Chonsumes, and I do 
not believe any instance of it will ever be found 
more ancient than that of Rameses I., the grand- 


1 Diimichen, “ Die Sethostafel von Abydos (mit Abbildung),” in the 
7 ,eitschrift fur agyptische Sprache und Alterthumskun.de , 1864, p. 81. 
Deveria, “ La nouvelle table d’Abydos, comparee aux autres listes 
royales de l’ancienne Egypte, redigee sous les Ramessides ou anterieure- 
ment,” in the Rev. Archeologique , 1865, I. 50, and Mariette, “ La nou¬ 
velle table d’Abydos,” Rev. Arch. 1866, I. 73. 


40 


LECTURE II. 


father of the great conqueror. Now if this tablet of 
Abydos is correct, seventy-six kings, that is, very 
many more kings than can be counted in English 
history, must have reigned over Egypt before the 
first books of the Bible were written. But if we go 
back in English history to Ethelred II. in 976, we 
shall find that not more than forty-four sovereigns 
have reigned during a thousand years, and the aver¬ 
age length of an Egyptian king’s reign cannot be 
shown to be shorter than that of an English sove¬ 
reign. 

But are the names on the tablet of 

Evidence of the ... - . 

Reality of Sever- Abydos names of real personages, or 

eigns named. are they (or at least some of them) as 
imaginary as the kings of Britain, beginning with 
Brutus, as reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the 
kings of Scotland, beginning with Fergus I., whose 
portraits adorn the walls of Holyrood ? There is but 
one way of settling the question, and that is by look¬ 
ing out for evidence which will confirm or contradict 
that given by these royal lists. As far as the test of 
verification has been applied to these lists, there is no 
reason whatever for distrusting them. Instead of ad¬ 
mitting sovereigns who have never lived, they have for 
certain reasons omitted many, the existence of whom 
is quite certain. The intention of the tablets was not 
historical or chronological, but simply devotional, and 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION 


41 


the selection and arrangement of names consequently 
vary, though the most considerable names are the 
same in all. 

M. de Rouge has carefully studied all the monu¬ 
ments which belong to the first six dynasties. 1 The 
earliest monuments that can be found belong to king 
Seneferu, the 20th on the list of Abydos; and from 
this king till the 38th on the list, the evidence is com¬ 
plete, and the order of succession thoroughly estab¬ 
lished by independent inscriptions contemporaneous 
with the sovereigns of whom they speak. There is, 
for instance, the tomb at Gizeh of a queen who graced 
the courts of king Seneferu and the two kings who 
followed him. Two officers have left inscriptions 
which say that they had served the kings Unas and 
Teta. The great inscription of Una 2 begins by say¬ 
ing that this officer served Teta, and ends with his 
services under Merenra. This king was succeeded 
by his brother Neferkara (No. 38 of the list). The 
tomb of the mother of these royal brothers still 
exists. She was the wife of Pepi-Merira (No. 36), 
several monuments of whom are known; one of 
them, in Wadi Magharah in the peninsula of Mount 
Sinai, is dated in the eighteenth year of his reign. 

1 “ Recherches sur les monuments qu’on peut attribuer aux six pre¬ 
mieres dynasties de Manethon Paris, 1866. 

2 “ Records of the Past,” Vol. II. p. 1. 


42 


LECTURE II. 


No period in any history that can be named is better 
authenticated by contemporary monuments. 

The same truth may be asserted of the twelfth 
dynasty, which in the tablet of Abydos is represented 
by Nos. 59 to 65. The number of monuments accu¬ 
rately dated belonging to this period is very consider¬ 
able. They are all perfectly consistent with one 
another, and leave no doubt as to the length of each 
reign and of the whole dynasty. It is to this dynasty 
that the splendid tomb of Nahre-se-Chnumhotep at 
Benihassan belongs. His inscription mentions the 
first four sovereigns as having honoured three succes¬ 
sive generations of his family. 


Let me now speak of the omissions 
of this tablet, which I have selected in 


Omissions of 
this List. 


preference to others in consequence of its being 
the longest and the most intelligible as to its arrange¬ 
ment. 

The most beautiful monuments of the eighteenth 
dynasty were raised by the powerful queen Hatasu, 1 
daughter of Tehutimes I., who associated her with 
him. She reigned for some years either alone or in 
conjunction with her brothers Tehutimes II. and 
Tehutimes III. successively; but her name and mem- 


1 Of late very generally called Hashop, in simple forgetfulness of the 
most undisputed rules of hieroglyphic decipherment. When an error of 
this kind is once admitted, it is almost impossible to eradicate it. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


43 


ory were persecuted by the latter, who resented her 
dominion over him during the years of his minority. 
Her name does not appear on the tablet of Abydos. 
There is also an interval between the reigns of 
Amenhotep III. and Hor-em-heb, which chronolo¬ 
gically is filled up by the period of the sun-disk 
worshippers. Amenhotep III. was followed by a 
king, the fourth of the same name, who dropped it 
when he assumed that of Chut-en-Aten, as the 
founder of a new religion, which had but a very 
partial and short-lived success. His attempts at 
reformation led to his exclusion from the lists of the 
legitimate kings. There is monumental evidence of 
one or two reigns of short duration before that of 
Hor-em-heb, who broke up the monuments of Chut- 
en-Aten, and used them in the construction of his 
own. It is not out of place to mention the fact that 
the first information we obtained about this abortive 
attempt at the transformation of the Egyptian reli¬ 
gion, was derived from blocks of one of the propyla 
of Karnak, which Mohammed Ali had brutally pulled 
down, that the stones might be broken up and 
roasted to quick-lime, in order to furnish stucco for 
his saltpetre works. Mr. Perring, an English archi¬ 
tect, who was there, was surprised to find that the 
faces of the stones which had been placed inwards 
and covered with cement were sculptured with 


44 


LECTURE II. 


hieroglyphics of the same perfect execution as those 
which had been engraved on them after their arrange¬ 
ment in the new building. This appropriation, of 
which there are many instances, by one sovereign of 
materials bearing the name and inscription of one of 
his predecessors, is always of value as determining 
the question of priority in time. 

The omission of the heretical sovereigns is easily 
accounted for, and Seti may have shared the dislike 
of Tehutimes for queen Hatasu. But no satisfactory 
explanation has yet been given of the omission of a 
large number of names between the end of the twelfth 
and the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty. The 
immediate passage on the tablet from one of these 
dynasties to the other, cannot mean that the king 
numbered 65 was followed by the king'numbered 66, 
who is Aahmes I. The important inscription of the 
naval officer Aahmes, son of Abana, which has al¬ 
ready been quoted, mentions king Sekenen-Ra as 
the predecessor of Aahmes I. Sekenen-Ra is as 
thoroughly historical a personage as any one of our 
own sovereigns. There were even three kings of the 
name, and their tombs have actually been found at 
Thebes. On the other hand, the tablet of Ameni- 
senb, now in the Louvre, belongs to the reign of a 
king anterior to the eighteenth dynasty, but later 
vthan the twelfth, as it records the restoration of a 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


45 


temple at Abydos founded by Usertsen 1 1 The in¬ 
terval between the twelfth and the eighteenth dynasty 
must have been very considerable. The time imme¬ 
diately preceding the eighteenth dynasty was the 
period of the foreign domination generally known as 
that of the Hyksos, or the Shepherd kings. So 
much is certain, but it is absolutely impossible to 
ascertain from Egyptian records when this period 
began, and how long it lasted. The 511 years which 
are ascribed to it by Manetho, as quoted by Josephus, 
are neither to be simply accepted nor rejected, but 
must remain subject to future verification. The only 
evidence from Egyptian sources which bears upon 
the subject is a monument of Rameses II., dated from 
the four hundredth year of one of these kings of 
foreign origin. But a considerable number of native 
kings must have reigned between the last king of the 
twelfth dynasty and the beginning of the foreign in¬ 
vasion. There are numerous inscriptions which 
prove that sovereigns powerful in the north of Egypt 
had extended their dominion to the very heart of 
Nubia. The monuments of Thebes, southern Egypt 
and Nubia, might be consistent with the hypothesis 
of a Hyksos kingdom in the north, but the presence 

1 Commonly called Usertesen, or still more erroneously Usirtasen. 
Usert is a feminine noun, and sen is a pronominal suffix, in allusion to 
the child’s parents, like <?/j es and art. 


46 


LECTURE II. 


of equally important monuments of the Sebekhbteps 
at Bubastis and Tanis, kings whose names occupy an 
important place in the chamber of Karnak, would 
alone be sufficient to overthrow this hypothesis. 
There is in the Louvre a magnificent colossal statue 
in real granite of Sebekhotep III., with reference to 
which M. de Rouge says: “ A single statue of this 
excellence and of such a material shows clearly that 
the king who had it executed for the decoration of 
his temples or palaces had not yet suffered from the 
invasion of the Shepherds. It is evident that under 
his reign Egypt was still a great power, peacefully 
cultivating the arts.” Perhaps the most interesting 
monument of this period is the colossal statue of the 
king Semench-ka-Ra (the eighteenth king of the thir¬ 
teenth dynasty, according to the royal Turin papy¬ 
rus), on the right shoulder of which one of the foreign 
kings has had his name engraved in hieroglyphic 
characters. 

Of the kings of the eleventh dynasty, only two 
(Nos. 57 and 58) appear on the tablet of Abydos. 
Very interesting inscriptions belonging to their reigns 
are still extant; but other kings bearing the name of 
Antuf and Mentuhotep are known to us, not only by 
inscriptions, but by their coffins in our museums. Of 
Mentuhotep III., dates have been found as high as his 
forty-third year. And a tablet has been found repre- 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 47 

senting him as being worshipped by his successor, 
Antuf IV. There is a very interesting fact connected 
with one of the monuments of this dynasty. Many 
years ago, 1 Dr. Birch translated a papyrus, now in 
the British Museum, describing a judicial inquiry con¬ 
cerning robberies committed in the royal tombs at 
Thebes. The tombs of the kings are described as 
having been inspected. In one of these tombs the 
king Antuf-aa is reported to be represented on a tab¬ 
let accompanied by his hound Behkaa. This tomb 
has quite recently been discovered by M. Mariette at 
Drah-abu’lneggah, with the picture of the king, and 
the dog’s name was Behkaa written over the picture 
of the animal. The inscription on the tablet is dated 
from the fiftieth year of the king. 

Evidence like this proves that there is no exaggera¬ 
tion in the list of Abydos. It does not aim at pre¬ 
senting a complete list of kings. It only mentions 
those for whom Seti had a special devotion. The 
disappearance of Memphis and other great cities is 
quite sufficient to account for the absence of monu¬ 
mental evidence for some of the reigns. It is very 
probable that the earliest kings left no monuments. 
But for nearly every king on the tablet who is unre- 

1 In the Revue Archeologique of 1856. See Dr. Birch’s paper “ On 
the Tablet of Antefaa,” in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical 
Archaeology, Vol. IV. p. 172. 


48 


LECTURE II. 


presented by monumental evidence, we can produce 
another king omitted by the tablet, but whose reign 
is proved by unimpeachable evidence. 

The evidence of such genealogies as 
Genealogies. are f oun d j n the tombs leads to chro¬ 
nological results very similar to those derived from 
the succession of the kings. These genealogies have 
nothing fabulous about them, like those against which 
Mr. Grote cautions his readers; they are as complete^ 
ly matter of fact as any recorded on the tombstones 
of our own churchyards. 1 

A great many writers who have 
treated of Egyptian chronology have 
endeavoured to utilize the names and numbers given 
in the fragments of Manetho. There is not the 
slightest reason for questioning the fact that Manetho 
had access to authentic historical records ; and if his 
work were still extant, it would be of invaluable ser¬ 
vice to us. As it is, we are indebted to him for the 
notion of the division into dynasties with local 
origins, all of which have been accurately verified. 

1 The funereal tablets often mention the name of the father and mother 
and some other near relatives of the departed. One tablet seldom goes 
back three or more generations. And the longest genealogy which has 
been recovered appears to be defective rather than otherwise. Dr. 
Lieblein’s '* Dictionnaire des noms hieroglyphiques ” contains an in¬ 
valuable collection of these family records arranged in chronological 
order. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


49 


But his work has unfortunately been lost, and the few 
fragments of it which remain, and which give but an 
imperfect notion of the whole, have been preserved 
by writers who do not appear to have observed strict 
accuracy in their quotations, and they have clearly in 
some instances quoted him at second-hand. The late 
Dr. Hincks, who had given great attention to the 
subject, has pointed out a series of deliberate falsifica¬ 
tions of Manetho’s lists made by the early Christian 
and perhaps by Jewish chronologers for the purpose 
of bringing these lists into harmony with the Old 
Testament, or rather with fanciful interpretations of 
the Old Testament. He does not attribute these fal¬ 
sifications to dishonest motives, but to 11 mistakes or 
injudicious attempts to correct mistakes.” 

It was once generally supposed (and 

Absolute Dates. 

I have myself written in favour of the 
supposition 1 ) that absolute dates might be detected 

l On “ The Earliest Epochs of Authentic Chronology,” in Home and 
Foreign Review , 1862, p. 420. M. Biot, in his “ Memoire sur quelques 
dates absolues,” and after him M. Romieu and Dr. Gensler, have dealt 
with the Egyptian calendars as if they recorded the risings of certain stars. 
But the text of the calendars distinctly speaks of the transits of the stars, 
and never of their risings. I have discussed this question in the Chroni¬ 
cle , 25 Jan. 1868, and in the Transactions of the Society for Biblical 
Archaeology , Vol. III. M. E. de Rouge has a very important “ note sur 
quelques conditions preliminaires des calculs qu on peut tenter sur le 
calendrier et les dates egyptiennes,'* in the Revue Archeologique , 1864, 
Vol. II. p. 81. 

3 


50 


LECTURE II. 


on the monuments. The heliacal risings of certain 
stars were calculated by M. Biot as fixing the reign 
of one king in 1300 b . c ., and of another king in the 
year 1444. But I no longer believe the Egyptian 
texts really bear out the interpretation which fur¬ 
nishes the data for these calculations. Dr. Dumich- 
en, 1 Dr. Lauth 2 and other scholars have written in 
favour of other fixed dates which they believe can be 
determined astronomically. But whether these dates 
are right or wrong (and I am unwilling to express an 
opinion on questions which I have not personally in¬ 
vestigated), matters but little for our present purpose. 
The essential point upon which I wish to insist is, 
that the Egyptian monarchy, according to the most 
moderate calculation, must have already been in ex¬ 
istence fifteen hundred years at the very least, but 
probably more than two thousand years, before the 
book of Exodus was written. 

1 “ Die erste bis jetzt aufgefundene sichere Angabe fiber die Regie- 
rungszeit eines agyptischen Konigs aus dem alten Reich, welche uns 
durch dem medicinischen Papyrus Ebers fiberliefert wird:” Leipzig, 
1874. 

2 Aegyptische chronologie, basirt auf die vollstandige Reihe der 
Epochen seit Bytes-Menes bis Hadrian-Antonin durch drei Sothisperio- 
den==438o Jahre.” See also a paper of M. Chabas, “ Determination 
d’une date certaine dans le r£gne d’un roi de l’ancien empire en 
Egypte,” in the Memoires presentes a l' Academic des inscriptions et 
belles lettres, 1877. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 51 

The composition of the book of 

Egyptian mon- 

Exodus, however, cannot unfortunately archy anterior to 
be considered a fixed date. The 3000 b . c . 
opinion which used to be universally received, that 
Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, must assuredly 
be abandoned. I am quite ready to admit that the 
co-existence in the Pentateuch of the documents 
called Elohistic and Jehovistic is in itself no argument 
against the authorship of Moses. But the fact that 
these documents continue to run through the book 
of Joshua furnishes an argument which admits of no 
reply. The book of Joshua and the book of Exodus 
are parts of one and the same work, and the historical 
allusions in the book of Joshua have compelled some 
of the commentators who pride themselves most upon 
their orthodoxy (Matthew Henry, for instance), to 
refer the authorship of it to times subsequent to the 
foundation of the Hebrew monarchy. 

But though the book of Exodus as a whole may 
not be the work of a contemporary, there is really no 
reason for doubting the accuracy of the statement 
about Pithom and Rameses. Egyptian history 
renders it most probable that Moses was a contem¬ 
porary of the great Rameses. The exodus of the 
Israelites cannot with any probability be brought 
lower down than 1310 years before Christ, and it is 
about 2050 before this that I would place the lowest 


52 


LECTURE II. 


limit for estimating the beginning of the historical 
Egyptian monarchy. The date of the Great Pyramid 
cannot be more recent than 3000 b.c. 

„ . This is undoubtedly a great and 

Pre-histonc an- 

tiquity of human venerable antiquity, but it is after all 
race m Egypt. yer y i n f er i or to the antiquity of the 

human race in Egypt, as demonstrated by the opera¬ 
tions suggested by Mr. Leonard Horner to the 
Royal Society, and carried out at first at its expense, 
and finally at the cost of Abbas Pacha, between the 
years 1851 and 1854. Ninety-five pits were sunk at 
different spots into the alluvial soil of the Nile valley. 
“ Although,” Professor Ansted tells us, 1 “ it cannot 
be regarded as a matter about which there is no dis¬ 
pute, all the evidence that exists seems to point to 
five inches per century as fully representing the 
average amount of elevation given by the Nile mud 
to the bed of the Nile and the surrounding country 
covered by the annual inundation.” “ The average 
can hardly under any calculations have exceeded five 
inches per century during the last several centuries, 
whilst from the mere effects of long-continued pres¬ 
sure the beds must become more compact at some 
depth below than they are near the surface, and the 
rate of thickness ought to become gradually less the 
deeper we penetrate.” In the course of the opera- 


1 “Geological Gossip,” p. 190. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


53 


tions, remains showing the handiwork of man were 
brought up from considerable depths: sculptured 
granite, architecturally carved limestone, human and 
animal figures, coloured mosaic, vases, jars, a copper 
knife, and at very great depths—fifty, sixty, or even 
seventy-two feet—bricks and fragments of pottery. 
At thirty-three feet and a half, a tablet with inscrip¬ 
tions was found. There is not a single geologist 
who does not at once infer from these facts an enor¬ 
mous lapse of time during which the human race 
must have inhabited Egypt. Geologists are not 
more deficient in common sense than other men, and 
they are quite ready to allow that accidental circum¬ 
stances may have contributed to bury some articles 
deeper than others; and their conclusions are not 
drawn from this or that experiment, but from the 
cumulative evidence derived from nearly a hundred 
experiments made over a very extensive area of 
land. 

In reply to the objection that the artificial objects 
might have fallen into old wells which had after¬ 
wards been filled up, Sir Charles Lyell says: 1 “Of 
the ninety-five shafts and borings, seventy or more 
were made far from the sites of towns or villages; 
and allowing that every field may have had its well, 
there would be small chance of the borings striking 


1 “Antiquity of Man,” p. 38, 1873. 


54 


LECTURE II. 


upon the site even of a small number of them in 
seventy experiments.” 

I remember being once asked about these opera¬ 
tions, and when I had described them, one of my 
friends came up to me and said in a voice of solemn 
warning and protest, “ If what you have been saying 
is true, Christianity is a mere fable.” I could only 
reply, “ No ; it only shows that your conception of 
Christianity involves something fabulous.” What¬ 
ever claim a religion may have to a divine authority, 
that claim cannot be extended to its theology, which 
is nothing else but a system of reasoning upon two 
sets of data, namely, those furnished by the religion 
itself, and those furnished by the science of the day. 
Biblical chronology as understood by Usher, Peta- 
vius or other learned men, depends not upon the 
Bible only, but also upon the data of profane chro¬ 
nology as understood in their days, and the latter 
chronology was built in great part upon statements 
of Greek and Latin writers which at the present day 
are known to be absolutely worthless. 


The boring instruments which had 
to be employed at great depths in the 
operations of which I have been speak- 


Egyptian 

Ethnology. 


ing, necessarily brought up everything in fragments. 
There is therefore no proof that the Egyptians known 
to us from history were descended from the pre-his- 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


55 


toric men whose existence was first brought to light 
by these operations. But the very proximate proba¬ 
bility of such a descent might have suggested itself 
to ethnologists, who have persisted in looking for the 
ancestors of the Egyptians among races the very 
existence of which cannot be traced very far back. 
At all events, the view is now entirely abandoned 
according to which the Egyptians came down the 
Nile from the more southern regions of Africa. It 
has been most conclusively proved that they gradu¬ 
ally advanced from north to south, and the earliest 
Ethiopian civilization is demonstrably the child, not 
the parent, of the Egyptian. Most scholars now 
point to the interior of Asia as the cradle of the 
Egyptian people. I will only say that the farther 
back we go into antiquity, the more closely does the 
Egyptian type approach the European. This is the 
opinion of Mariette Bey and of Dr. Birch, and the 
same opinion was most powerfully expressed by Pro¬ 
fessor Owen at the Oriental Congress held in London 
in 1874. In reference to one specimen, Professor 
Owen said : “ With English costume and complexion, 
this Egyptian of the Ancient Empire would pass for 
a well-to-do sensible British citizen and rate-payer.” 
And of another he said: “ The general character of 
the face recalls that of the northern German; he 
might be the countryman of Bismarck.” In refer- 


LECTURE II. 


56 

ence to another hypothesis which had been proposed, 
he observed : “ Unknown and scarce conceivable as 
are the conditions which could bring about the con¬ 
version of the Australian into the Egyptian type of 
skull, the influence of civilization and admixture 
would be still more impotent in blotting out the den¬ 
tal characteristics of the lower race. The size of 
crown and multiplication of fangs are reduced in the 
ancient Egyptian to the standard of Indo-European 
or so-called highly civilized races. The last molar 
has the same inferiority of size.” 1 

It is in vain, I believe, that the testi¬ 
mony of philology has been invoked in 
evidence of the origin of the Egyptians. The lan¬ 
guage which has been recovered belongs to a very 
early stage of speech, and is not, or at least cannot 
be shown to be, allied to any other known language 
than its descendant the Coptic. It is certainly not 
akin to any of the known dialects either of North or 
of South Africa, and the attempts which have hitherto 
been made towards establishing such a kindred must 
be considered as absolute failures. A certain number 
of Egyptian words, such as i, “ go,” ta, “ give, place,” 

1 Transactions of the Second Session of the International Congress of 
Orientalists , held in London , 1874, p. 355 and following. Professor 
Owen here discusses the doctrine put forth by Professor Huxley upon 
“ the Geographical Distribution of the chief Modifications of Mankind,” 
in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, Jan. 1871. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


57 


have the same meaning as the corresponding Indo- 
European roots. And a few other Egyptian words 
sound very like Semitic words of the same meaning. 
But the total number of words in the Egyptian voca¬ 
bulary which have the appearance of relationship 
either with the Aryan or with the Semitic stock turns 
out, after passing through the necessary process of 
sifting, to be extremely small. A considerable num¬ 
ber of words have certainly passed from one language 
into another, but all these have to be deducted. 
Those who talk of Egyptian having its root in 
Semitic, or say that its grammar is Semitic, must 
mean something quite different from what these 
words imply in the mouth of some one well versed in 
the science of Language. I once heard a learned 
Jew compare Hebrew with Portuguese. All that 
he meant to say was, that it preferred the letter 
m where the kindred languages took n, as the 
Portuguese language often does in contrast with its 
sister languages, the Spanish, French and Italian. 
And those who speak of Egyptian grammar as being 
Semitic are clearly thinking of some peculiarities of 
it, in forgetfulness of very much more important ones. 
It would be quite easy, under such conditions, to 
discover Finnish or Polynesian affinities. 

The Egyptian and the Semitic languages belong to 
quite different stages of language, the former to what 

3 * 


58 LECTURE II. 

Professor Max Muller calls the second or Termina- 
tional, the latter to the third or Inflexional stage. In 
the Terminational stage, two or more roots may 
coalesce to form a word, the one retaining its radical 
independence, the other sinking down to a mere 
termination. The languages belonging to this stage 
have generally been called agglutinative. Now the 
Egyptian language has indeed reached this stage as 
regards the pronominal and one or two other suffixes. 
But in all other respects it most nearly resembles the 
languages of the first or Radical stage, in which there 
is no formal distinction between a root and a word. 
The agglutination between an Egyptian word and its 
pronominal suffix is of the lightest possible kind; a 
particle may, and often does, intervene between them, 
A recent critic reviewing Rossi’s Grammar a few 
weeks ago, preferred that of Brugsch’s to it in conse¬ 
quence of the paradigms of verbs which are to be 
found in the latter. He might with equal wisdom 
have found fault with both for omitting the declen¬ 
sions. My own criticism would have been very 
different. There is, I believe, too much paradigm in 
Rossi’s Grammar. There are no paradigms at all 
in Egyptian; and those who have inserted such things 
into their Grammars (I say it with the utmost defer¬ 
ence to such admirable scholars as E. de Rouge and 
Brugsch) have been led astray by their efforts to find 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


59 


in Egyptian what exists in other languages. But 
each kind of language has its own processes. Hebrew 
and Arabic verbs can as little be thrown into moods 
and tenses corresponding to the Greek or Latin verbs, 
as you can find Pual or Hithpahel forms in French or 
English. Personal endings are indispensable to the 
Indo-European and to the Semitic verbs. The Egyp¬ 
tian verb is unchangeable, and has no personal ending 
properly speaking. The suffix which is sometimes 
added to it is not really a personal ending. It is put 
instead of a subject; and when the subject is ex¬ 
pressed, the pronominal suffix is and must be omitted. 
It would be impossible in Hebrew, or in any other 
Semitic language, to suppress the personal ending, 
which is an essential part of the word in which it 
occurs. 

One of the chief differences between the Egyptian 
language on the one hand and the Indo-European 
and Semitic on the other, is, that the distinctions 
between roots, stems and words, can hardly be said to 
exist at all in the former. The bare root, which in 
the languages of the third stage lies, as it were, below 
the surface, and is only revealed by its developments 
to scientific inquiry, is almost invariably identical in 
Egyptian with the word in actual use. From one 
Aryan or Semitic root, which is itself no part of 
speech and has but an abstract existence, verbs, 


6o 


LECTURE II. 


nouns, adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech, 
are derived. The actual Egyptian word, taken by 
itself, is in very many instances no part of speech, but 
within the limits of the notion which it represents is 
potentially noun, verb, adjective, adverb, &c. The 
notion expressed by an Egyptian word is only deter¬ 
mined, as that of a verb in the strict sense (verbum 
finitum), by the presence of a subject. When no 
subject (that is, noun or pronoun) is expressed, we 
may indeed have a “ verbum infinitum,” but this is 
grammatically a noun or an adjective. How can a 
language of this description be called Semitic in its 
grammar ? 

There are three different ways in which a verb may 
be connected with its subject, but these are wholly 
irrespective of time or mood, so that grammarians 
who have introduced these forms into their paradigms 
call them “ Present-Past-Future,” first, second or third. 
They might add, “ Indicative-Potential-Conjunctive,” 
and so forth. The Egyptian verb is often accom¬ 
panied by an auxiliary, and is grammatically subordi¬ 
nate to it; and the combinations formed by these 
auxiliary words with the verbal notion enable the 
language to express meanings equivalent to those 
expressed by our Indo-European tenses and moods. 
But this is very different from what is meant by 
paradigm. 


EG VPTIAN CIVILIZA TION. 


61 


I have just spoken of the grammatical subordina¬ 
tion of a verb to its auxiliary. This is almost the 
only kind of grammatical subordination which exists 
in the language, and the consequence of it is fatal to 
anything like beauty of construction in the form of 
the sentences. It seems unfair to judge of the capa¬ 
bilities of a language of which almost the entire 
literature has perished. How could we judge of the 
capabilities of the Greek language had all its poetry 
and oratory been lost, and nothing remained but its 
inscriptions ? Yet enough remains to show what the 
structure of the Egyptian sentences must necessarily 
have been; we possess several narratives of consid¬ 
erable length and of different dates, a great many 
hymns, and the heroic poem of Pentaur, which was 
considered sufficiently important to be engraved on 
the walls of at least four temples—Abydos, Luqsor, 
Karnak and Ipsambul—at one of the periods of the 
greatest glory of Egypt. It is evident that prose 
sentences like those of Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero 
or Burke, or poetical ones like those of Sophocles, 
Euripides or Horace (not to mention any other 
names), are as impossible in Egyptian as they are in 
Hebrew or Arabic. Whatever beauty there is in 
Egyptian composition (and there often is considera¬ 
ble beauty) is derived either from the thought itself 
or from the simplicity of the expression, not from the 


62 


LECTURE II. 


artistic variety or structure of its periods. M. Re¬ 
nan 1 has made very similar remarks upon the struc¬ 
ture of the Semitic sentence (which, however, admits 
of much greater variety than the Egyptian, and does 
not suffer in narratives from the perpetual repetition 
of the same auxiliary verb), and he has inferred from 
it the inferiority of the Semitic mind to the European 
with reference to certain branches of intellectual 
development. I have little doubt that M. Renan is 
right to this extent, that certain languages as vehicles 
of thought are inferior to others, and that as long as 
men are confined to the inferior vehicle of thought, 
they are unable to raise themselves to the level of 
others who enjoy a more efficient instrument. It is 
difficult to conceive the Egyptians as otherwise than 
incapacitated by their language from profound philo¬ 
sophy. It is hardly possible to read a page written 
in an Indo-European language, from Sanskrit to 
Keltic, without coming across some kind of dialectic 
process of which I do not remember a single trace in 
an Egyptian text. 

But if the Egyptian mind must be 
considered inferior in some branches of 
intellectual development, the world of Art, not indeed 
in its full extent, but in many aspects, ranging from 

1 “ Histoire Generate et syst&me compare des langues Semitiques,’’ 
livre i. chap. i. p. 21. The whole chapter is to the point. 


EGYP TIAN Cl VIL1ZA TION. 


63 


mere elegance and prettiness to real beauty and sub¬ 
limity, was revealed to it at a very early period in¬ 
deed. Those who know Egyptian art only through 
our northern museums can have no adequate concep¬ 
tion of what it really is or was. Almost all the ob¬ 
jects in our museums have suffered by frequent loco¬ 
motion, atmospheric influences, or other deleterious 
causes. You should see the freshness of the articles 
contained in the museum at Bulaq, which seem to 
have just come from the hand of the artist, or inspect 
some of the tombs which have not yet suffered from 
the vandalism of the moderns, or see the magnificent 
temples whose ruins have as yet escaped destruction. 
But, even on the spot, imagination must come to our 
aid if the past has to be realized. 

Many of us have seen the Pyramids, and, as Dean 
Stanley says, “ One is inclined to imagine that the 
Pyramids are immutable, and that such as you see 
them now, such they were always. Of distant views 
this is true; but taking them near at hand, it is more 
easy from the existing ruins to conceive Karnac as it 
was than it is to conceive the Pyramidal platform as it 
was. The smooth casing of part of the top of the 
second Pyramid, and the magnificent granite blocks 
which form the lower stages of the third, serve to show 
what they must have been all from top to bottom; 
the first and second, brilliant white or yellow lime- 


6 4 


LECTURE II. 


stone, smooth from top to bottom, instead of those 
rude disjointed masses which their stripped sides now 
present; the third, all glowing with the red granite 
from the first cataract. As it is they have the barba¬ 
rous look of Stonehenge; but then they must have 
shone with the polish of an age already rich with civili¬ 
zation, and that the more remarkable when it is re¬ 
membered that these granite blocks which furnish the 
outside of the third and inside of the first must have 
come all the way from the first cataract. It also seems, 
from Herodotus and others, that these smooth out¬ 
sides were covered with sculptures. Then you must 
build up or uncover the massive tombs, now broken 
or choked up with sand, so as to restore the aspect 
of vast streets of tombs like those on the Appian 
Way, out of which the Great Pyramid would rise like 
a cathedral above smaller churches. Lastly, you must 
enclose two other Pyramids with stone precincts and 
gigantic gateways; and above all, must restore the 
Sphinx as he (for it must never be forgotten that a 
female Sphinx was almost unknown) was in the days 
of his glory .” 1 

I may perhaps appear open to the suspicion of 
over-estimating the arts of ancient Egypt. I there¬ 
fore cannot do better than refer you to the mature 
judgment of one who has written the History of 

1 “ Sinai and Palestine,” p. lvii. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 65 

Architecture 1 with consummate knowledge, ability 
and taste. 


“No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great 
Pyramid,” says Mr. Fergusson, “ without being struck with 
astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill displayed in its 
construction. The immense blocks of granite brought from 
Syene—a distance of 500 miles—polished like glass and so fitted 
that the joints can hardly be detected. Nothing can be more 
wonderful than the extraordinary amount of knowledge dis¬ 
played in the construction of the discharging chambers over 
the roof of the principal apartment, in the alignment of the 
sloping galleries, in the provision of ventilating shafts, and in 
all the wonderful contrivances of the structure. All these, too, 
are carried out with such precision that, notwithstanding the 
superincumbent weight, no settlement in any part can be de¬ 
tected to the extent of an appreciable fraction of an inch. 
Nothing more perfect, mechanically, has ever been erected 
since that time, and we ask ourselves in vain, how long it 
must have taken before men acquired such experience and 
3 uch skill, or were so perfectly organized, as to contemplate 
and complete such undertakings.” 

The walls of the most ancient tombs are decorated 
with pictures. 

“In all these pictures the men are represented with an 
ethnic and artistic truth that enables us easily to recognize 
their race and station. The animals are not only distinguish¬ 
able, but the characteristic peculiarities of each species are 

1 See also the whole fifth book of Mr. Fergusson’s ,l Illustrated Hand¬ 
book of Architecture.’* 


66 


LECTURE II. 


seized with a power of generalization seldom, if ever, sur¬ 
passed.” 

“ More striking than even the paintings are the portrait 
statues which have recently been discovered in the secret 
recesses of these tombs; nothing more wonderfully truthful 
and realistic has been done since that time till the invention 
of photography, and even that can hardly represent a man 
with such unflattering truthfulness as these old coloured terra¬ 
cotta portraits of the sleek rich men of the Pyramid period.” 

I now turn to the pages describing the buildings at 
Thebes. 

“ Though the Rhamession is so grand from its dimensions, 
and so beautiful from its design, it is far surpassed in every 
respect by the palace temple at Karnac, which is perhaps the 
noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced by 
the hand of man. 

” Its principal dimensions are 1200 feet in length, by about 
360 in width, and it covers therefore about 430,000 square 
feet, or nearly twice the area of St. Peter’s at Rome, and 
more than four times that of any mediaeval cathedral existing. 
This, however, is not a fair ^ay of estimating its dimensions, 
for our churches are buildings entirely under one roof; but at 
Karnac a considerable portion of the area was uncovered by 
any buildings, so that no such comparison is just. The great 
hypostile hall, however, is internally 340 feet by 170, and 
with its two pylons it covers more than 88,000 square feet, a 
greater area than the cathedral of Cologne, the largest of all 
our northern cathedrals ; and when we consider that this is 
only a part of a great whole, we may fairly assert that the 
entire structure is among the largest, as it undoubtedly is one 
of the most beautiful, buildings in the world. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


67 


“We have thus in this one temple a complete history of 
✓he style during the whole of its most flourishing period; and 
either for interest or for beauty it forms such a series as no 
other country and no other age can produce. Besides those 
buildings mentioned above, there are other temples to the 
North, to the East, and more especially to the South, and 
pylons connecting them, and avenues of sphinxes extending 
for miles, and enclosing walls and tanks and embankments— 
making up such a group as no city ever possessed before or 
since. St. Peter with its colonnades and the Vatican make 
up an immense mass, but as insignificant in extent as in style 
when compared with this glory of ancient Thebes and its 
surrounding temples. 

“ The culminating point and climax of all this group of 
buildings is the hypostile hall of Manephthah. . . No language 
can convey an idea of its beauty, and no artist has yet been 
able to reproduce its form so as to convey to those who have 
not seen it an idea of its grandeur. The mass of its central 
piers, illumined by a flood of light from the clerestory, and 
the smaller pillars of the wings gradually fading into obscu¬ 
rity, are so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of 
infinite space ; at the same time, the beauty and massiveness 
of the forms, and the brilliancy of their coloured decorations, 
all combine to stamp this as the greatest of man’s architec¬ 
tural works, but such a one as it would be impossible to re¬ 
produce except in such a climate and in that individual style 
in which and for which it was created.” 

There is one more quotation from which I am un¬ 
able to refrain. 

“In all the conveniences and elegances of building they 


68 


LECTURE II. 


seem to have anticipated all that has been in those countries 
down to the present day. Indeed, in all probability, the an¬ 
cient Egyptians surpassed the modern in those respects as 
much as they did in the more important forms of architec¬ 
ture.” 

True artistic power may display itself in a gem as 
well as in the design of a cathedral. The precious 
materials of which Egyptian jewellery was composed 
have naturally contributed to their destruction in for¬ 
mer times, but there are still extant trinkets of mar¬ 
vellous beauty. A few years ago some peasants near 
Thebes dug up the coffin of the queen Aahhotep, wife 
of king Rames. This king’s name is one of those 
which does not occur in the tablet of Abydos, but he 
is known from different records, and his picture is 
found at Qurnah in a tomb of the eighteenth dynasty. 
Queen Aahhotep was the ancestress of this dynasty. 
Her coffin contained treasures of jewellery, which 
were brought to Paris at the last General Exhibition, 
and are now objects of wonder and admiration to all 
who visit the Museum at Bulaq. Between the linen 
coverings, precious weapons and ornaments were 
found, daggers, a golden axe, a chain with three large 
golden bees and a breastplate, and on the body itself 
a golden chain, with a scarabaeus, armlets, a fillet for 
the brow and other objects. Two little barks in gold 
and silver, bronze axes bearing the name of her 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


69 


husband Rames, and great bangles for the ankles, lay 
immediately upon the wood of the coffin. The 
jewellers of Paris could not have produced more 
exquisite workmanship. 

I must not omit to tell you that, to the practised 
eye of an archaeologist, every object of Egyptian art 
bears upon it as well defined a date as a mediaeval 
church window or porch. The astonishing identity 
which is visible through all the periods of Egyptian 
art is consistent with an immense amount of change 
which must exist wherever there is life. There are 
periods of splendour, progress and deterioration, and 
every age has its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius 
or Mariette, would at once tell you the age of a 
statue, inscription or manuscript, without looking at 
the text which actually mentions the exact date. 

Painting, as understood in these later centuries, was 
entirely unknown to the Egyptians, though they had 
coloured pictures ; but the harmony of colours was 
thoroughly understood by them, and their employ¬ 
ment of colour in architecture or generally in decora¬ 
tion puts our modern efforts to shame. “ They were 
aware” (as Sir Gardner Wilkinson says) “that for 
decorative purposes the primary colours should pre¬ 
dominate, and that secondary hues should be second¬ 
ary in quantity and in position; their most usual 
combinations were therefore blue, red and green; 


70 


LECTURE II. 


and a fillet of white or yellow was introduced between 
them to obviate that false effect which is apt to con¬ 
vert red and blue into purple when placed together 
in immediate contact. When yellow was introduced, 
a due proportion of black was added to balance it, and 
for each colour was sought its suitable companion; or 
if certain colours occasionally predominated in a part 
of the wall, the balance was restored by a greater 
quantity of others elsewhere, so that the due propor¬ 
tions of all were kept up, and the general effect was a 
perfect concord.” 

The earliest monuments show the use of a great 
variety of musical instruments—flutes, pipes, harps, 
guitars, lyres and tamburines—and they give repre¬ 
sentations of concerts in which human voices are 
combined with the sounds of several instruments. 1 
My learned friend Dr. Dumichen, himself an admira¬ 
ble musician, in noticing the presence not only of a 
monkey, but of hounds, at a concert in the tomb of 
Ptahhotep, is very much tempted to doubt the musi¬ 
cal taste of that great dignitary of the fifth dynasty, 
and to suppose that he preferred the accompaniments 
of his canine friends. There is, however, I believe, 

1 See Wilkinson, “Ancient Egyptians,” Vol. I. p. 431; Carl Engel, 
u Music of the Most Ancient Nations,” p. 180; and Lauth “ Ueber 
altagyptische Musik,” in the Sitzungsberichte of the Munich Academy, 
3d July, 1869. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


71 


reason to suppose that the picture is intended to rep¬ 
resent dogs from the spirit-land, whose ears are no 
doubt attuned to the harmony of sweet sounds. 

The Egyptians were not, as used on very insuffi¬ 
cient evidence to be supposed, a sad or morose 
people. Their religion at least does not appear to 
have been “ designed to make their pleasures less.” 
The description of their festivals given by classical 
writers is fully corroborated by authentic testimony, 
and the national tendency, at least in the prosperous 
times of the monarchy, was towards excess in the 
exercise of conviviality. Great quantities of wine, 
both native and foreign, were consumed; and beer¬ 
houses, if we may judge of the frequency with which 
they are inveighed against in the papyri, must have 
been as serious a pest in the time of the great Ra- 
meses as they are in the England of the nineteenth 
■century. The point of the story which Herodotos 
tells about the representation of a dead body in a 
coffin being carried round and shown to the guests at 
entertainments, lies in the final words uttered by the 
bearer: “Cast your eyes on this figure; after death, 
you yourself will resemble it; drink then, and be 
happy P I think it would be easy to quote English, 
French or German drinking-songs containing the 
same moral. The element of mournfulness is intro¬ 
duced merely for the purpose of bringing out the 


72 


LECTURE II. 


convivial sentiment into stronger relief. It is possible 
that Herodotos makes allusion to a song of which 
several copies or fragments of copies have reached 
us. It is called the Song of King Antuf—a mon¬ 
arch of the eleventh dynasty, whom I have already 
mentioned—and it says : 1 

“ Fulfil thy desire while thou livest. Put oils 
upon thy head, clothe thyself with fine linen adorned 
with precious metals .... yield to thy desire— 
fulfil thy desire with thy good things whilst thou 
art upon earth, according to the dictation of thy 
heart. The day will come to thee when one hears 
not the voice,—when the one who is at rest hears not 
their voices. Feast in tranquillity; seeing that there 
is no one who carries his goods with him.” 

Another poem which has been preserved, “The 
Lay of the Harper,” is very similar in its tone: “ Let 
odours and oils stand before thy nostril. Let song 
and music be before thy face, and leave behind thee 
all evil cares. Mind thee of joy till cometh the day 
of pilgrimage, when we draw near the land which 
loveth silence.” 2 

It is impossible to read these scraps of poetry 
without being reminded of a passage in the book of 
Ecclesiastes, written in the person of Solomon, by 

1 “ Records of the Past/’ Vol. IV. p. 117. 

3 “ Records of the Past,’ 1 Vol. VI. p. 129. 


EG YPTIAN CIVILIZA 77ON. 


73 


some one living in the last century of the Persian 
domination in Palestine. It begins: “ Go thy way ; 
eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a 
merry heart, for God accepteth thy works. Let thy 
garments be always white; and let thy hand lack no 
ointment.” And it ends—“ for there is no work, no 
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, 
whither thou goest.” 1 

And if it be true that the Preacher in another por¬ 
tion of his work reminds the young man to whom he 
is addressing himself that for all these things God 
will bring him into judgment, not less true is it that 
the Egyptian harper also sang: 

“ Mind thee of the day when thou too shalt start 
for the land to which one goeth to return not thence. 
Good for thee will have been a good life; therefore 
be just and hate iniquity; for he who loveth what is 
Right shall triumph.” 

The triumph of Right over Wrong, 
of Right in speech and in action (for Moial Code * 
the same word signifies both Truth and Justice) is 
the burden of nine-tenths of the Egyptian texts which 
have come down to us. Right 2 is represented as a 

1 Eccles. ix. 7, 8, 9. 

2 The primitive notion implied by the word maat seems to be the 
geometrical one “right,” as in “right line,” as opposed to xab, “ bent,” 

“ perverse.” Maat as a noun is the “ straight rule,’’ “ canon.’* 

4 


74 


LECTURE II. 


goddess ruling as mistress over heaven and earth and 
the world beyond the grave. The gods are said to 
live by it. Although funereal inscriptions are less to 
be depended upon when they describe the virtues of 
the deceased than when they give the dates of his 
birth and death, they may at least be quoted in evi¬ 
dence of the rule of conduct by which actions were 
estimated. We are not obliged to believe that this or 
that man possessed all the virtues which are ascribed 
to him, but we cannot resist the conviction that the 
recognized Egyptian code of morality was a very 
noble and refined one. “ None of the Christian vir¬ 
tues/' M. Chabas says, “is forgotten in it; piety, 
charity, gentleness, self-command in word and ac¬ 
tion, chastity, the protection of the weak, benevolence 
towards the humble, deference to superiors, respect 
for property in its minutest details, ... all is ex¬ 
pressed there, and in extremely good language.” In 
confirmation of this, I will add that the translators of 
the Bible and of the early Christian literature, who 
were so often compelled to retain Greek words for 
which they could discover no Egyptian equivalent, 
found the native vocabulary amply sufficient for the ex¬ 
pression of the most delicate notions of Christian ethics. 

The following are specimens of the praises which 
are put into the mouth of departed worthies: 

“ Not a little child did I injure. Not a widow did 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


75 


I oppress. Not a herdsman did I ill-treat There was 
no beggar in my days; no one starved in my time. 
And when the years of famine came, I ploughed all 
the lands of the province to its northern and southern 
boundaries, feeding its inhabitants and providing their 
food. There was no starving person in it, and I made 
the widow to be as though she possessed a husband.” 1 
Of another great personage it is said that, in admi¬ 
nistering justice, “he made no distinction between a 
stranger and those known to him. He was the father 
of the weak, the support of him who had no mother. 
Feared by the ill-doer, he protected the poor; he was 
the avenger of those whom a more powerful one had 
deprived of property. He was the husband of the 
widow, the refuge of the orphan.” 2 

It is said of another 3 that he was “ the protector of 
the humble, a palm of abundance to the destitute, 
food to the hungry and the poor, largeness of hand 
to the weak ;” and another passage implies that his 
wisdom was at the service of those who were igno¬ 
rant. 

1 Inscriptions of Ameni, Denkm, ii. pl.121. 

2 Tablet of Antuf, Louvre, c. 26. I quote from M. de Rough's Notice 
des Monuments , p. 88. 

3 British Museum, 581. This text, of which a copy is given in Sharpe, 
“ Egyptian Inscriptions,” Vol. II. p. 83, is a difficult one, and would re¬ 
pay a careful study. 


76 


LECTURE II. 


The tablet of Beka, 1 now at Turin, thus describes 
the deceased: 

“I was just and true without malice, placing God 
in my heart and quick in discerning his will. I have 
come to the city of those who dwell in eternity. I 
have done good upon earth; I have done no wrong ; 
I have done no crime; I have approved of nothing 
base or evil, but have taken pleasure in speaking the 
truth, for I well know the glory there is in doing this 
upon earth from the first action (of life) even to the 
tomb.I am a Sahu who took pleasure in right¬ 

eousness, conformably with the laws ( hapu ) of the 
tribunal of the two-fold Right. There is no lowly 
person whom I had oppressed; I have done no in¬ 
jury to men who honored their gods. The sincerity 
and goodness which were in the heart of my father 
and my mother, my love [paid back] to them. Never 
have I outraged it in my mode of action towards 
them from the beginning of the time of my youth. 
Though great, I have acted as if I had been a little 
one. I have not disabled any one worthier than my¬ 
self. My mouth has always been opened to utter 
true things, not to foment quarrels. I have repeated 
what I have heard just as it was told to me.” 

Great stress is always in these inscriptions laid upon 

1 Published with a translation and commentary by M. Chabas, in the 
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology , Vol. V. p. 459, 



EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. JJ 

the strictest form of veracity; as, for instance, “ I have 
not altered a story in the telling of it.” The works 
of charity are commonly spoken of in terms which 
are principally derived from the Book of the Dead. 

“ Doing that which is Right and hating that which 
is Wrong, I was bread to the hungry, water to the 
thirsty, clothes to the naked, a refuge to him that was 
in want; that which I did to him, the great God hath 
done to me.” 1 

“ I was one who did that which was pleasing to 
his father and his mother; the joy of his brethren, the 
friend of his companions, noble-hearted to all those 
of his city. I gave bread to the hungry ; ... I re¬ 
ceived [travellers ?] on the road; my doors were open 
to those who came from without, and I gave them 
wherewith to refresh themselves. And God hath 
inclined his countenance to me for what I have done; 
he hath given me old age upon earth, in long and 
pleasant duration, with many children at my feet, and 
sons in face of his own son.” 2 

God’s reward for well-doing is again mentioned in 
the great inscription now at Miramar 3 in honour of a 
lady who had been charitable to persons of her own 
sex, whether girls, wives or widows. 


1 Duemichen, Kalenderinschriften, xlvi. 

2 Bergmar.n, Hieroglyphische Inschriften , pi. vi. i. 8. 

3 Ibid. pi. viii. ix. 


78 


LECTURE II. 


“ My heart inclined me to the Right when I was 
yet a child not yet instructed as to the Right and 
Good. And what my heart dictated I failed not to 
perform. And God rewarded me for this, rejoicing 
me with the happiness which he has granted me for 
walking after his way.” 

We are acquainted with several collections of Pre¬ 
cepts and Maxims on the conduct of life. Such are 
the Maxims of Ptahhotep contained in the Prisse 
Papyrus, the Instructions of Amenemhat, and the 
Maxims of Ani; and fragments of other important 
works are preserved in the Museums of Paris, Leyden 
and St. Petersburg. The most venerable of them is 
the work of Ptahhotep, which dates from the age of 
the Pyramids, and yet appeals to the authority of the 
ancients. It is undoubtedly, as M. Chabas called 
it, 1 in the title of the memorable essay in which 
its contents were first made known, “The most 
Ancient Book of the World.” The manuscript at 
Paris which contains it was written centuries before 
the Hebrew lawgiver was born, but the author of 
the work lived as far back as the reign of king 
Assa Tatkara of the fifth dynasty. This most pre¬ 
cious and venerable relic of antiquity is as yet very 
imperfectly understood. Its general import is clear 

1 1 Le plus an^en livre du monde,” in the Revue Archeologique of 

1857. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION 


79 


enough, and some of the sections are perfectly in¬ 
telligible ; but the philological difficulties with which 
it abounds will for many years, I fear, resist the efforts 
of the most accomplished interpreters. 1 These books 
are very similar in character and tone to the book of 
Proverbs in our Bible. They inculcate the study of 
wisdom, the duty to parents and superiors, respect for 
property, the advantages of charitableness, peaceable¬ 
ness and content, of liberality, humility, chastity and 
sobriety, of truthfulness and justice; and they show 
the wickedness and folly of disobedience, strife, arro¬ 
gance and pride, of slothfulness, intemperance, un¬ 
chastity and other vices. It is only through a 
lamentable misunderstanding of the text that some 
scholars have discovered anti-religious, epicurean or 
sceptical expressions. 2 3 


1 M. Chabas has fully explained the nature of these difficulties in the 
Zeits.f agypt. Spr. 1870, p. 84 fol. Dr. Lauth’s essay in the Sitzungs- 
berichte of the Academy of Munich, 1869 and 1870, is very valuable, and 

I confess myself to be greatly indebted to it; but even the best portions 
of it can only be accepted provisionally. 

3 “Let thy face be white (i. e. enjoy thyself) whilst thou livest; has 
these issued from the coffin (md^ err chest) one who has entered there¬ 
in ?" This hasty translation by Mr. Goodwin, ( Zeitschr . 1867, p. 95) 
does not deserve the success it has enjoyed, and I do not believe the 
author of it would have published it, had his attention been called in 
time to such difficulties as these : 1, the Egyptian preposition en cannot 
stand at the end of a sentence; 2, it never means “therein;” 3, the 
word md x <rra is never found in the sense of “ coffin,” but in that of “ chest 


8o 


LECTURE II. 


The same morality is taught in the romantic litera¬ 
ture which sprung up at a very early period and con¬ 
tinued to flourish down to the latest times. It is an 
interesting question, but one which cannot as yet be 
answered with certainty, whether or no the moralizing 
fables about animals attributed to ^Esop are really of 
Egyptian origin ? The Egyptian text of at least one 
of these fables is contained in a papyrus of the Ley¬ 
den collection, but it is in “ demotic,” not in the early 
language of the country. 

I have laid before you some of the characteristic 
features of Egyptian civilization, and I ought not to 
conclude without alluding to two errors, one of which 
may be considered as entirely obsolete among schol¬ 
ars, whilst the other may claim the sanction of very 
high authority. 

As long as our information depended 

Castes. _ 

upon the classical Greek authors, the 
existence of castes among the Egyptians was ad¬ 
mitted as certain. The error was detected as soon as 
the sense of the inscriptions could be made out. A 
very slight knowledge of the language was sufficient 
to demonstrate the truth to the late M. Ampere. 1 

of provisions4, the sentiment in question is absurdly out of place in 
the context where the words occur. 

1 * Des Castes Dans l’ancienne Egypte,” in the Revue des Deux 
Mondes, Sept. 1848. 


EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 


81 


Among ourselves, many men may be found whose 
ancestors have for several generations followed the 
same calling, either the army or the church, or some 
branch of industry or trade. The Egyptians were 
no doubt even more conservative than ourselves in 
this respect. But there was no impassable barrier 
between two professions. The son or the brother of 
a warrior might be a priest. It was perhaps more 
difficult to rise in the world than it is with us; but a 
man of education, a scribe, was eligible to any office, 
civil, military or sacerdotal, to which his talents or 
the chances of fortune might lead him, and nothing 
prevented his marriage with the daughter of a man 
of a different profession. 

The high position occupied in ancient 

. , , _ - r * Monogamy. 

Egypt by the mother of the family, the 
“ mistress of the house,” is absolutely irreconcilable 
with the existence either of polygamy as a general 
practice, or of such an institution as the harhn. The 
plurality of wives does not appear to have been con¬ 
trary to law, but it certainly was unusual. A few of 
the Egyptian kings had a large number of wives, but 
they appear in this respect to have followed foreign 
rather than native custom. The use of the word 
harem in the translation of hieroglyphic texts tends 
to produce an entirely erroneous conception of 
ancient Egyptian society. The word itself is harm- 

4 * 


82 


LECTURE II. 


less; but (to say the least) it confounds Egyptian 
with utterly foreign ideas, Arabian or Turkish ; and 
when it is used to signify an establishment of concu¬ 
bines, I believe the translator has entirely misunder¬ 
stood the Egyptian text . 1 

1 Many excellent scholars have used u harem ” as the translation of 
the Egyptian word %ent . The most important passage which would 
justify this rendering is on the tablet of Pa-shere-en-Ptah. It is thus 
translated in Brugsch's Hieroglyphic Lexicon, p. 1093 : ‘‘ Es waren mir 
schone Weiber, doch war ich bereits 43 Jahr alt ohne dass mir ein 
mannliches Kind geboren war.” I believe the passage is better under¬ 
stood if taken in connection with the corresponding passage on the 
tablet of the wife of Pa-shere-en-Ptah (Sharpe? " Egyptian Inscriptions/' 
Vol. I. pi. 4). This lady says of her husband : “ I had not borne to him 
a male child, but daughters only.” He therefore means to say : I had 
handsome girls, but I was already forty-three years old before a boy was 
born to me.” The German “ Frauenzimmer,” if put into hieroglyphic 
orthography, would admit of the very determinative sign which leads to 
the notion of “ shutting up/’ 


LECTURE III. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


It was quite unnecessary for the 

, . Identity of the 

purpose of these Lectures that the Religious i nst i- 
sketch of Egyptian civilization which tutions from First 
I laid before you in the last Lecture 
should be completed or filled up in detail. But in 
studying the phenomena which a religion presents, 
it is indispensable that we should understand certain 
conditions accompanying those phenomena. Men’s 
thoughts are forced into certain channels and assume 
definite forms according to the nature of their 
occupations. It is not a matter of indifference 
whether we have to do with people in what is called 
the hunting stage, nomadic populations, agricultural¬ 
ists or merchants; with men of hot or cold climates; 
with savages or with men in the most advanced 

stages of culture. The religions and mythologies of 

83 




8 4 


LECTURE III. 


such peoples differ very widely. Even among those 
professing the same religion, great differences must 
necessarily be found between men of highly educated 
and cultivated minds, and unpolished men insensible 
to art or poetry of a high order. Now it is certain 
that at least three thousand years before Christ there 
was in Egypt a powerful and elaborately organized 
monarchy, enjoying a material civilization in many 
respects not inferior to that of Europe in the last cen¬ 
tury. Centuries must have elapsed before such a 
civilization became possible. Of a state of barbarism 
or even of patriarchal life anterior to the monumental 
period, there is no historical vestige. The earliest 
monuments which have been discovered present to 
us the very same fully developed civilization and the 
same religion as the later monuments. The blocks 
of the Pyramids bear quarry marks exhibiting the 
decimal notation, and are dated by the months of the 
calendar which was in use down to the latest times. 
You must remember that the calendars of other 
nations (Hebrews, Greeks and Romans) show great 
ignorance of the real length of the year. It was only 
after the conquest of Alexandria that the Roman 
calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar. The politi¬ 
cal division into nomes (provinces, each of which had 
its principal deity) is as old as the age of the Pyra¬ 
mids. The gods whose names appear in the oldest 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


85 


tombs were worshipped down to the Christian times. 
The same kind of priesthoods which are mentioned 
in the tablets of Canopus and Rosetta in the Ptolemaic 
period are as ancient as the Pyramids, and more 
ancient than any Pyramid of which we know the 
date. There is in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford 
the monument of a man whose priestly office had 
been endowed by a king of the second dynasty. 
Excellent scholars like Dr. Hincks and Mr. Goodwin 
have ascribed the monument to this early date, and 
have considered it the most ancient of all dated 
monuments. This indeed cannot be proved; but 
there is no doubt whatever that it is the most 
ancient authentic monument recording a religious 
endowment. 

No temples of the ancient empire are Temples, 
extant at present, except perhaps the 
monument discovered some years ago in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the great Sphinx; but no one can say 
whether this is a temple or a tomb. But this want 
of early temples is certainly owing to the destruction 
of the most ancient cities, like Memphis and Helio¬ 
polis. There is no reason for doubting the inscrip¬ 
tion first published by M. de Rouge, which says that 
Chufu or Cheops built his pyramid near a temple of 
Isis, and that he built or endowed a temple to Ha- 
thor; or the inscriptions at Dendera, which ascribe 


86 


LECTURE III. 


the restoration of its ancient temple to Tehutimes 
III., “according to the plan found in ancient writings 
of the time of king Chufu.” There is every reason 
for believing that in the ancient empire great and 
splendid temples were built But we must not take 
for granted that temples at this early period were 
places of worship in our modern sense of the term. 
At no period of the Egyptian religion were the pub¬ 
lic admitted to the temples as worshippers. All the 
temples we know were royal offerings made to the 
divinity of the locality, and none but the priestly per¬ 
sonages attached to the temple itself had free access 
to its precincts. But the image of the god and those 
of the divinities associated with him were often 
brought out in solemn processions, in which the en¬ 
tire population took part. 

In the principal temple of each pro- 

Triads and En- . 

neads. vince, the chief deity was associated 

with other gods; hence the expression 
deot auvvaoi of the Greek inscriptions; hence from an 
early period triads (consisting of the principal god, a 
female deity and their offspring), or enneads, consist¬ 
ing of nine gods. Thus at Thebes the triad consisted 
of Amon, Nut and Chonsu; at Abydos, of Osiris, 
Isis and Horus. No special importance was attached 
by the Egyptians to the number three , and it is a mis¬ 
take to look for triads everywhere, for the number of 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


87 

gods varied according to the place; the number nine 
was much more frequent, and this is often nothing 
more than a round number, signifying either the gods 
of a locality or the entire Pantheon. 

As each deity was connected with Local Character 
some locality, his name was generally wShip*” 
followed by a phrase indicating this 
relationship. A deity was said to be Lord of Abydos, 
mistress of Senem, presiding in Thebes, inhabiting 
Hermopolis; sometimes a particle was interposed be¬ 
tween the name of the god and that of the town, as 
“ Anubis from Sechem,” “ Neith of Sais;” sometimes 
one or more epithets were added, as “ the mighty,” 
" the beneficent,” “ the august;” sometimes the name 
of an animal which was the recognized symbol of the 
god, a bull, a ram or a lion. Special titles were given 
to divinities according to the place in which they were 
worshipped: Osiris, for instance, was called che, “ the 
child,” at Thebes; he was ura, “ the great one,” at 
Heliopolis; ati, “ the sovereign,” at Memphis. It 
happened frequently that in the same town one god 
was worshipped under different aspects, or as proceed¬ 
ing from different localities, and treated as though 
there were different divine persons of the same name. 
Chonsu in Thebes, under the name nefer-hotep y is 
entreated to lend his miraculous power to Chonsu in 
Thebes under the name ari secher. We read of Set 


88 


LECTURE III. 


the god of Senu, Set of Uau, Set of Un and Set of 
Meru. Other forms of Set are well known, but those 
I have cited are brought together in one inscription as 
children of the god Tmu. I find invocations in a very- 
early inscription addressed to the Anubis of six dif¬ 
ferent localities. Apis is the son of Ptah, of Tmu, of 
Osiris and of Sokari. Are all these fathers of Apis 
one person? Horus is the son of the goddess Isis, 
but he is also the son of the goddess Hathor. Isis 
must then be the same as Hathor, unless mythology 
is proof against logic. Let us admit this, and also that 
Seb, the father of Isis, is identical with Ra, the father 
of Hathor; but what shall we say on being told that 
Horus was born in Tattu (the Mendes of the Greeks), 
and also that he was born in Cheb ? Geographical 
localities do not so easily lend themselves to identifi¬ 
cation. In a well-known text, Horus is called the son 
of Isis and Osiris, but shortly afterwards Seb is named 
as his father. Students of mythology will not be 
astonished or scandalized if they discover that Osiris 
is at once the father, brother, husband and son of Isis, 
and also the son of their child Horus. They will 
read a text on the alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., 
now in the Soane Museum, which speaks of “the son 
who proceeds from the father, and the father who pro¬ 
ceeds from his son,” and if their studies are rightly con¬ 
ducted, the mystery will not be hard to understand. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT, 


89 


The Egyptian deities are innumer- 
able. There were countless gods in iimume rabie. 
heaven and below the earth. Every 
town and village had its local patrons. Every month 
of the year, every day of the month, every hour of 
the day and of the night, had its presiding divinity, 
and all these gods had to be propitiated by offerings. 
I several times made the attempt to draw up an in¬ 
dex of the divine names occurring in the texts, but 
found it necessary to abandon the enterprize. What 
can all these gods mean ? 

Nothing can be more clear than that Mean notions 
under the name of God the Egyptians ^°^ n - ng these 
did not understand, as we do, a being 
without body, parts or passions. The bodies of the 
gods are spoken of as well as their souls, and they 
have both parts and passions; they are described as 
suffering from hunger and thirst, old age, disease, 
fear and sorrow. They perspire, their limbs quake, 
their head aches, their teeth chatter, their eyes weep, 
their nose bleeds, “ poison takes possession of their 
flesh, even as the Nile takes possession of the land.” 
They may be stung by reptiles and burnt by fire. 
They shriek and howl with pain and grief. All the 
great gods require protection. Osiris is helpless 
against his enemies, and his remains are protected by 
his wife and sister. Hathor extends her wings as a 


90 


LECTURE III. 


protection over the victorious Horus, or, as one form 
of the legend expresses it, “ she protects him with 
her body as a divine cow; ” yet Hathor in her turn 
needs protection, and even the sun-god Ra, though 
invested with the predicates of supreme divinity, re¬ 
quires the aid of the goddess Isis. All the gods are 
liable to be forced to grant the prayers of men, 
through fear of threats which it is inconceivable to 
us that any intelligence but that of idiots should 
have believed. There are many aspects of this reli¬ 
gion, and some of them are extremely ridiculous. 
The very impulse, however, which prompts us to 
laugh at the religion of our fellow-men, ought to 
suggest a doubt whether we have really caught their 
meaning. 

Simplification We are tempted, in our bewilder¬ 
ment at the number of the gods, to ask 
whether the process of reduction is not applicable to 
them as well as that of multiplication. And we dis¬ 
cover to our relief that such a process is actually sug¬ 
gested to us by documents of indisputable authority, 
which show that the same god is often known under 
many names. In the Litanies of the god Ra, which are 
inscribed on the walls of the royal tombs at Biban-el- 
moluk, the god is invoked under seventy-five different 
names. A monument published in Burton’s Excerpta 
Hieroglyphica gives the names, or rather a selection 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


91 


of the names, of Ptah, the principal god of Memphis. 
The Book of the Dead has a chapter entirely con¬ 
sisting of the names of Osiris. The inscriptions of 
the temple of Dendera give a long list of the names 
of the goddess Hathor. She is identified not only 
with Isis, but with Sechet at Memphis, Neith at 
Sais, Saosis at Heliopolis, Nehemauit at Hermopolis, 
Bast at Bubastis, Sothis at Elephantine, and many 
other goddesses. These authorities alone are suffi¬ 
cient, almost at a glance, to convince us that not only 
are some inferior deities mere aspects of the greater 
gods, but that several at least of the greater gods 
themselves are but different aspects of one and the 
same. 

Lepsius, in his Dissertation on the gods of the 
first order, has published several lists of these divini¬ 
ties taken from monuments of different periods, the 
most ancient list being taken from an altar of the 
sixth dynasty. On comparing these lists together, it 
is again plain that Mentu and Tmu, two of the great 
gods of Thebes, are merely aspects of the sun-god Ra. 
The entire list of the gods of the first order is easily 
reduced to two groups ; the first representing the sun- 
god Ra and his family, and the second Osiris and his 
family. It is most probable that neither Ptah nor 
Amon were originally at the head of lists, but ob¬ 
tained their places as being chief divinities of the 


92 


LECTURE III. 


capitals Memphis and Thebes. Both these gods are 
identified with the sun-god Ra, and so indeed are all 
the chief local divinities. The whole mythology of 
Egypt may be said to turn upon the histories of Ra 
and Osiris, and these histories run into each other, 
sometimes in inextricable confusion, which ceases to 
be wonderful when texts are discovered which simply 
identify Osiris and Ra. And, finally, other texts are 
known, wherein Ra, Osiris, Amon and all other gods 
disappear, except as simple names , and the unity of 
God is asserted in the noblest language of mono¬ 
theistic religion. There are many very eminent 
scholars who, with full knowledge of all that can be 
said to the contrary, maintain that the Egyptian 
religion is essentially monotheistic, and that the mul¬ 
tiplicity of gods is only due to the personification of 
“ the attributes, characters and offices of the supreme 
God.” 

Is the Religion No scholaT is better entitled to be 

really Monothe- heard on this subject than the late M. 
istic ? 

Emmanuel Rouge, whose matured judg¬ 
ment is as follows : 1 

“No one has called in question the fundamental 
meaning of the principal passages by the help of 

1 “Conference sur la religion des anciens Egyptiens, prononcee au 
Cercle Catholique, 14 avril, 1869,” published in the Annales de la Philo¬ 
sophic Chretienne , tome XX. p. 32 7. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


93 


which we are able to establish what ancient Egypt 
has taught concerning God, the world and man. I 
said God, not the gods. The first characteristic of the 
religion is the Unity [of God] most energetically ex¬ 
pressed : God, One, Sole and Only; no others with 
Him.—He is the Only Being—living in truth.—Thou 
art One, and millions of beings proceed from thee.— 
He has made everything, and he alone has not been 
made. The clearest, the simplest, the most precise 
conception. 

“ But how reconcile the Unity of God with Egyp¬ 
tian Polytheism. History and geography will per¬ 
haps elucidate the matter. The Egyptian religion 
comprehends a quantity of local worships. The 
Egypt which Menes brought together entire under 
his sceptre was divided into nomes, each having a 
capital town; each of these regions has its principal 
god designed by a special name; but it is always the 
same doctrine which re-appears under different names. 
One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval 
God; everywhere and always it is One Substance, 
self-existent, and an unapproachable God.” 

M. de Rouge then says that from, or rather before, 
the beginning of the historical period, the pure mono¬ 
theistic religion passed through the phase of Sabeism ; 
the Sun, instead of being considered as the symbol of 
life, was taken as the manifestation of God Himself. 


94 


LECTURE III. 


The second characteristic of the religion was “ a mys¬ 
tery which does honour to the theological intellect of 
the Egyptians. God is self-existent; he is the only 
being who has not been begotten; hence the idea of 
considering God under two aspects, the Father and 
the Son. In most of the hymns we come across this 
idea of the double Being who engendereth Himself, 
the Soul in two Twins—to signify two Persons never 
to be separated. A hymn of the Leyden Museum 
. . . . calls Him ‘ the One of One.’ 

“ Are these noble doctrines then the result of cen¬ 
turies? Certainly not; for they were in existence 
more than two thousand years before the Christian 
era. On the other hand, Polytheism, the sources of 
which we have pointed out, developes itself and pro¬ 
gresses without interruption until the time of the 
Ptolemies. It is, therefore, more than five thousand 
years since, in the valley of the Nile, the hymn began 
to the Unity of God and the immortality of the soul, 
and we find Egypt in the last ages arrived at the most 
unbridled Polytheism. The belief in the Unity of the 
Supreme God and in his attributes as Creator and 
Lawgiver of man, whom he has endowed with an im¬ 
mortal soul—these are the primitive notions, enchased, 
like indestructible diamonds, in the midst of the my¬ 
thological superfetations accumulated in the centuries 
which have passed over that ancient civilization.” 


THE GODS OF EGYPT 


95 


Although some of the texts here alluded to have 
most probably a somewhat different meaning from 
that which M. de Rouge ascribes to them, the facts 
upon which he relies are in the main unassailable. 
It is incontestibly true that the sublimer portions of 
the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late 
result of a process of development or elimination 
from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demon¬ 
strably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian 
religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, 
heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and 
most corrupt. M. de Rouge is no doubt correct in 
his assertion that in the several local worships one 
and the same doctrine re-appears under different 
names and symbols. But he does not venture to as¬ 
sert that at any time within the historical period the 
worship of one God was anywhere practised to the 
exclusion of a plurality of gods. He only infers 
from the course of history that, as polytheism was 
constantly on the increase, the monotheistic doctrines 
must have preceded it. Another conclusion, how¬ 
ever, is suggested by the Egyptian texts to which he 
refers. The polytheistic and the so-called monothe¬ 
istic doctrines constantly appear together in one con¬ 
text ; not only in the sacred writings handed down 
by tradition, and subjected to interpolations and cor¬ 
ruptions of every kind, but even more frequently in 


96 


LECTURE III. 


literary compositions of a private nature, where no 
one would dream of suspecting interpolation. 
Throughout the whole range of Egyptian literature, 
no facts appear to be more certainly proved than 
these: (i) that the doctrine of one God and that of 
many gods were taught by the same men; (2) that no 
inconsistency between the two doctrines was thought 
of. Nothing, of course, can be more absurd if the 
Egyptians attached the same meaning to the word 
God that we do. But there may perhaps be a sense 
of the word which admits of its use for many as well 
as for one. We cannot do better at starting than en¬ 
deavour to ascertain what the Egyptians really meant 
when they use the word natar , which we translate 
“ god.” 

Evidence as to At first si S ht > the Egyptian language 
the meaning of is less likely to throw light upon the 
the word nutar. su bj ect than m ight be expected if it 

really belonged to the same stage of speech as either 
the Indo-European or the Semitic languages. In 
these languages almost every word is closely allied 
to several others connected together by derivation 
from a common root, and the primitive notion con¬ 
veyed by the word in question can be illustrated by 
the signification of the kindred words and their root. 
Generally speaking, however, in Egyptian every word 
is isolated. There is no distinction between word, 


THE GODS OF EGYPT, 


97 


stem and root. The same Egyptian word may 
sometimes have different significations; but this, as a 
rule, only means that the one notion which is ex¬ 
pressed by a word in Egyptian has no single word 
corresponding to it in English, French or German. 
It seldom happens that we can advance a step be¬ 
yond such a fact as that the word nutar is rightly 
translated “god.” I am glad, however, to be able to 
affirm with certainty that in this particular case we 
can accurately determine the primitive notion at¬ 
tached to the word. None of the explanations 
hitherto given of it can be considered satisfactory. 
That which I am about to propose will, I believe, be 
generally accepted by scholars, because it is arrived 
at as the result of a special study of all the published 
passages in which the word occurs. Such a study, 
as far as I am aware, has not yet been made, but if 
made by any other person it must necessarily lead to 
the same result. 

The old Egyptian word nutar had already in the 
popular pronunciation suffered from phonetic decay 
and lost its final consonant as early as the nineteenth 
dynasty, as we see by the inscriptions in the royal 
tombs at Biban-el-moluk , 1 and it appears in Coptic 

1 Zeitschr. f. Aegypt. Spr. 1874, p. 105, and M. Maspero s article in 
the Melanges <TArcheclogie, 1874, p. 140. The orthography of these 
popular forms is philologically of the highest importance. The form 

5 


98 


LECTURE III. 


under the forms nuti y nute. It is remarkable that the 
translators of the Bible into Coptic, who generally- 
abstained from the use of old Egyptian words con¬ 
nected with religion, and used Greek words instead, 
nevertheless adopted this one as expressive of their 
notion of God. 

There is another word, nutra y very frequently used 
either as verb or adjective, which is closely allied to 
nutar. The sense of “ renovation ” was first attached 
to it by M. E. de Rouge, on the strength of its final 
sign, which he considered as a determinative of signi¬ 
fication. But this conjecture, which has been very 
generally accepted, is really without any solid foun¬ 
dation ; the sign in question is here expressive of 
nothing more than the sound tra y and it will be found 
to all words so ending, whatever be their meaning; 
as hetra , whether signifying “join,” “horse,” or 
“ tribute; ” petra , “ behold; ” tra y “ season.” Another 
more obvious sense, “sacred,” “divine,” may be jus¬ 
tified by the Greek text of the tablet of Canopus, 
where nutra is translated Upoz y as applied to the 
sacred animals. But this meaning, though a certain 
one, occurs but seldom in the Egyptian texts, and 
when it so occurs is, after all, only a derived mean¬ 
ing, as is in fact the case with the Greek k(>0Q, the 

nuntar I reserved for a future study; M. Maspero published it with the 
rest, but no one appears to have noticed it. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


99 

first sense of which is “strong,” “vigorous .” 1 The 
notion expressed by nutar as a noun, and nutra as an 
adjective and verb, must be sought in the Coptic 
nomti, which in the translation of the Bible corre¬ 
sponds to the Greek words dbvaputoyb c, ca/upbc, 
io/upbio, “power,” “force,” “strong,” “fortify,” “pro¬ 
tect/* 2 

The reason why the identification of the old form 
nutar with the more recent nomti as well as nuti has 
hitherto escaped observation is, that the connecting 
link nuntar has either been unknown to scholars or 
disregarded by them. In nuntar , a process as well 
known to Egyptian as to Indo-European scholars has 
taken place . 3 The vowel of the first syllable has been 

1 'I epdg corresponds to the Sanskrit ish-ira-s, vigorous, from ish, juice, 
strength. See Curtius, 7 ,eitschr. fur vergleichen.de Sprackforschung , 
III. 154, and his ,l Griechische Etymologie,” p. 372. Plutarch (Mor. 
981 D) mentions this original physical sense of the word as maintained 
by certain persons, and the oarovv lepov } “ os sacrum,” is given as an 
example, 'lepa vdaog also called peya?.T], is another striking instance. In 
the Homeric poems, this physical sense gives the true force to such ex¬ 
pressions as T poirjg lepov irrohleOpov, leprjv iroAiv ’H eriovog, iepC) evi 
d!(f>pcp, lepov phog ’ AXkcvooio, lepr) ig TrjXepdxoLo. 

2 The Alexandrians invented the barbarous word dvvapdu, which can 
always be used as a translation of the verb nutra. 

3 The change of ti into in before t } as though the latter were preceded 
by a labial consonant, is not usual, but it is not without a parallel in other 
languages. Cf. xptp kto from root %P l i Latin tempto and the 
Lithuanian temptyva, both the latter from root, ta nasalized tan. The 


IOO 


LECTURE III : 


strengthened by the addition of a nasal consonant 
The old Egyptian word heket (beer) has by this pro¬ 
cess become henke in the Thebaic, and hemki in the 
Memphitic dialect. 

The following examples will illustrate the usage of 
the word. 

Large stones are often said to be nutru. This does 
not mean that they grow or that they are divine , but 
that they are mighty. In one of those paraphrases 
which are so common on the walls of Dendera, the 
unequivocal word uru , “ great, mighty,” is substituted 
for nutru} Sauit nutrit is a “ strong wall.” A crypt 
is aat nutrit , a “ strong-hold.” Three of the chambers 
of the temple of Dendera are said to be nutru. 
“ Qu’est ce qu’une salle divine ? ” very pertinently 
asks M. Mariette. Sat nutrit is a “ potent talisman.” 
Seti I. in his titles is the “ potent image,” sexem nutra f 
of Chepera. Nutra is constantly brought into paral¬ 
lelism with words implying “ might.” “ Great (lira) 
is the Eye of Horus, Mighty (ad) is the Eye of Horus, 
Strong (nutra) is the Eye of Horus, the Giver of 

observations of Curtius, “ Gr. Et.pp. 46 and 481, on the m in yapeiv 
and the Lithuanian gim-ti , appear to me to justify the form tempto , 
which Corssen rejects, though it occurs in the best manuscripts as well 
as inscriptions. 

1 Mariette, Dendera , I. pi, 67. So in the royal titles of the eighteenth 
dynasty, nutra sutenit of Tehutimes II. corresponds to the uah sutenit 
of Tehutimes III. and to the simpler ur sutenit of Chut en Aten. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


IOI 


Strength ( senutra ) is the Eye of Horus.” 1 “A 
mighty wall to Egypt, protecting their limbs; his 
force (pehti) is like Ptah in prostrating the barbarians, 
a child of might (sif nutra) in his coming forth like 
Harmachis.” 2 “He is strong (ten-re) in performing 
his duties to Amon-Ra, he is vigorous ( nutra ) in per¬ 
forming his duties to the sovereign, his lord.” In the 
Demotic text of the tablet of Canopus, nutra is trans¬ 
lated by %u, which signifies, “ strengthen, fortify, 
protect, invigorate.” It has constantly this meaning 
in the hieroglyphic texts. “ Thy body is fortified 
( nutri-ta ), protected ( yu-ta ), restored ( seput-ta).” 3 “Thy 
limbs are fortified (nutri-ta) by the Power ( secern) 
which is in heaven.” 4 Nutra men ma pet, “ strong 
and durable as heaven.” Nutra-f nut-ek er neken, 
“ He fortifies thy city against destruction.” Nutra-f 
Nutrit er nefu , “ He strengthens Nutrit against 
harm.” 5 Nutrit , the name of a town (in this place 
equivalent to Dendera), has exactly the same mean¬ 
ing as Samaria, Ashdod, Gaza, Valentia, and many 
other names significant of strength. Religious puri¬ 
fications were supposed to give strength, and the verb 

1 Sharpe, “ Egyptian Inscriptions,” Vol. II. p. 28. 

2 Duemichen, Historische Inschr. Vol. II. pp. 46, 12. 

* Je de Rouge, Inscriptions , Vol. I. pi. 25. 

4 Sharpe, Vol. II. p. 92. 

6 Many of the examples occur in Mariette's Dendera , Vol. I. pi. 6, 46 


102 


LECTURE III ; 


nutra is therefore often found in parallelism with ab 
and tur , both of which have the sense of religious 
purification. 

I will add one more illustration, which by itself 
might not be of much weight, but is really important 
when taken in conjunction with other evidence. The 
goddess Isis is distinguished among other divinities 
by the frequent epithet nutrit. When the inscriptions 
in her honor are written in Greek, she is most fre¬ 
quently called fizydXvj or fxsp<J ttj. 

There is yet another Egyptian word cognate to 
those we have been studying. Nutrit signifies “ eye¬ 
ball.” The notion here is of something fortified, pro¬ 
tected, guarded. “ Custodi me ut pupillam oculi 
“ Keep me as the apple of the eye.” The Arabic word 
kadaqat , which means the same thing, has an exactly 
similar etymology. And several other parallel instan¬ 
ces might be cited. 

The Egyptian nutar , I argue therefore, means 
Power, which is also the meaning of the Hebrew El. 
The extremely common Egyptian expression nutar 
nutra x exactly corresponds in sense to the Hebrew 
El Shaddai y the very title by which God tells Moses 

1 M. de Rouge, Chrestomathie , Fasc. iii. p. 25. translates this, “ dieu 
devenant dieu,” and says in a note, “ On ne sait pas au juste le sens du 
verbe nuter , qui forme le radical du mot nuter , ‘ dieu.' C’est une idee 
analogue h ' devenir ’ ou ‘ se renouveler,’ car nuteri est appliquee k 
l’ame resuscitee qui revet sa forme immortelle.” 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


103 


that He was known to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. 
“And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, ‘ I 
am Jahve: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac 
and unto Jacob by the name of El Shaddai, but by my 
name Jahve was I not known to them.’ ” Nutar mitra 
amtu heret is “the Almighty Power which is in 
heaven.” 

It is very remarkable that “ Brahman in Sanskrit 
meant originally Power, the same as El. It resisted 
for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last 
it yielded like all'other names of God, and became 
the name of one God.” 1 But the Egyptian nutar 
never became a proper name. It was indeed restric¬ 
ted in its use, as far back as our knowledge of the 
language enables us to trace it, but it never ceased to 
be a common noun, and was applied indifferently to 
each of the powers which the Egyptian imagination 
conceived as active in the universe, and to the Power 
from which all powers proceed. Horus and Ra and 
Osiris and Set are names of individual finite powers, 
but a Power without a name or any mythological 
characteristic is constantly referred to in the singular 
number, and can only be regarded as the object of 
that “sensus numinis,” or immediate perception of 
the Infinite, which like my learned predecessor Pro¬ 
fessor Max Muller, I consider “ not the result of rea- 
1 M. Muller, " Chips,” Vol. I. p. 3 6 3 - 


104 


LECTURE III. 


soning or generalizing, but an intuition as irresistible 
as the impressions of our senses.” 1 The following 
instances are taken from the moral writings of which 
I spoke in the last Lecture. 

i. The Maxims of Ptahhotep. 

They speak of “ God forbidding ” 
and “God commanding.” 

“The field which the great God hath given thee to 
till.” 


The Power. 


“ If any one beareth himself proudly, he will be 
humbled by God, who maketh his strength.” 

“ If thou art a wise man, bring up thy son in the 
love of God.” 

“ The magnanimous man is the object of God’s 
regard, but he who listens to his belly is scorned by 
his own wife.” 

“ Thy treasure has grown to thee through the gift 
of God.” 

“ God loveth the obedient and hateth the disobe¬ 
dient.” 

A good son is spoken of as “the gift of God.” 

2 . A papyrus of Leyden. 2 

1 “ Science of Language,” Second Series, p. 479, 7 th ed. 

2 Published in Leemans’s Monuments Egyptiens du Musee de Leide 
Pap. i. p. 344, i.—vi. An account of it is given in Dr. Lauth’s “ Alta- 
gyptische Lehrspruche,” in the Transactions of the Academy of Munich , 
July, 1872. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


*°5 


“ Happy is the man who eateth his own bread. 
Possess what thou hast in the joy of thy heart. 
What thou hast not, obtain it by work. It is profita¬ 
ble for a man to eat his own bread; God grants this 
to whosoever honors Him .” 

3. A papyrus at St. Petersburg. 1 2 

“ Praised be God for all His gifts.” 

“ God knows the wicked; He smites the wicked, 
even to blood.” 

4. The Maxims of Ani. 

“ Whoso acts, God will raise his name above the 
sensual man.” 

“ The sanctuary of God abhors [noisy manifesta¬ 
tions ?]. Pray humbly with a loving heart all the 
words of which are uttered in secret. He will pro¬ 
tect thee in thine affairs; He will listen to thy words; 
He will accept thine offerings.” 

“ In making thine oblation to God, beware of what 
He abhors.Exaggerate not the liturgical pre- 

1 This is described by Dr. Golenischeff in Lepsius’s Zeitschrift, 1876, p. 
107. 

2 This very investing book, published with the other papyri of Bulaq 
by M. Mariette, has been described by Brugsch-Bey in the Zeitschrift , 
1872, and has been translated by M. E. de Rouge and M. Chabas. The 
version of the latter scholar is the most careful and exact, all the dif¬ 
ficulties of the text being minutely considered and discussed. It oc¬ 
cupies the greater part of the scientific journal l'Egyptologie, entirely 
written by M. Chabas. 

5 * 



106 LECTURE III ; 

scriptions; it is forbidden to give more than what is 
prescribed. Let thine eyes consider the acts of His 
wrath. Thou shalt make adorations in His name. 
It is He who granteth genius with endless aptitudes; 
who magnifieth him who becometh great. The God 
of the world is in the light above the firmament; His 
emblems are upon earth; it is to them that worship 
is rendered daily.” 

Another section is upon maternal affection. It de¬ 
scribes the self-sacrifice of an affectionate mother 
from the earliest moments of the child’s existence, 
and continues as follows: “ Thou wast put to school, 
and whilst thou wast being taught letters she came 
punctually to thy master, bringing thee the bread and 
the drink of her house. Thou art now come to 
man’s estate; thou art married and hast a house; but 
never do thou forget the painful labour which thy 
mother endured, nor all the salutary care which she 
has,taken of thee. Take heed lest she have cause to 
complain of thee, for fear that she should raise her 
hands to God and He should listen to her prayer.” 

“ Give thyself to God, keep thyself continually for 
God, and let to-morrow be like to-day. Let thine 
eyes consider the acts of God; it is He who smiteth 
him that is smitten.” • 

5. The author of the Maxims contained in the 
demotic papyrus of the Louvre. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


107 


“ Curse not thy master before God.” 

It was in this style that in all periods of their his¬ 
tory, in the earliest not less confidently than in the 
latest, the Egyptians spoke of the Nutar in the sin¬ 
gular number. There can, I trust, be no doubt who 
that Power is which, in our translations, we do not 
hesitate to call God. It is unquestionably the true 
and only God, who “ is not far from any one of us, for 
in Him we live and move and have our being,” whose 
“ eternal power and Godhead ” and government of the 
world were made known through “ that Light which 
enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world.” 
In the extracts which I have quoted, and in many 
similar passages, we recognize the elements of true 
religion, free from all admixture of mythology. But 
if such be the Power, what are the “ powers ” ( nutriu ), 
and what are their relations to it ? 

In the formation of a theory of the The Powers> 
universe, the notion of Power produc¬ 
tive of results may, according as it is defined, lead to 
very different consequences. It may be conceived 
very much in the same sense as a Cause, and lead, as 
the notion of Cause will always lead reflecting men, 
in spite of the protests of critical philosophers, to the 
admission of One First Cause or Power from which 
all others are derived. But, as we know equally well 
from the history of speculation, the notions of Power 


io8 


LECTURE III. 


and Substance may be identified, and it is easy to 
imagine one universal Force in nature, in itself eter¬ 
nal and unchangeable, but manifesting itself in the 
most different forms. In both cases the result is 
Unity; Theistic in the first case, Pantheistic in the 
second. I shall have occasion to speak of the com¬ 
plete and final triumph of the latter of these con¬ 
ceptions. But the triumph did not take place till a 
comparatively late period, and till then the Egyptian 
religion may be considered as susceptible of either a 
Theistic or a Pantheistic interpretation. In either 
case the gods of the mythology represent the real or 
imaginary powers of the universe ; and what these 
powers were in the most primitive conception enter¬ 
tained of them by the Egyptians, can only be dis¬ 
covered by the same scientific process which has been 
applied with such success to the mythology of the 
Indo-European races. 

Myth and Le- The most common opinion held by 
gend ‘ the best scholars only a few years ago 

was, that however many gods the Egytians might 
have, they had no mythology properly speaking. 
The only myth they were supposed to possess was 
that about Osiris, and even this was imagined to have 
been brought into shape through Hellenic influences. 
This opinion is altogether an erroneous one : it con¬ 
fuses the potion of myth with that of mythological 


7 HE GODS OF EGYPT. 


109 


tale or legend; and whilst the Egyptians really had 
an abundance of legendary tales, their myths are 
simply innumerable. The tale of Osiris is as old as 
Egyptian civilization itself; that is, very much more 
than two thousand years before Hellenic influences 
came into operation. 

Several mythological tales of considerable extent 
are now well known to us. The legend of the revolt 
of the first men against the god Ra and his destruc¬ 
tion of them was discovered by M. Naville in one of 
the tombs at Biban-el-moluk. A long narrative of the 
victories of Horus was copied by the same accom¬ 
plished scholar from the walls of the temple at Edfu. 
It is written in the style of the heroic annals of the 
kings of Egypt, and accounts for the names of geo¬ 
graphical localities by the exploits of the divine 
warrior. The tale of Osiris, as told in the Greek 
work attributed to Plutarch, is made up out of 
several genuine Egyptian legends, and the wander¬ 
ings of the widowed Isis formed the subject of many 
legendary narratives. But the religious texts are 
literally crowded with allusions to mythological 
legends, and these allusions though they are neces¬ 
sarily obscure to us, must have been familiar to the 
Egyptians. 

The mythological legend grew out of myth, but 
must not be confounded with it. The myth was in 


IIO 


LECTURE ILL 


Egypt, what it was everywhere else, a mere phrase, 
often consisting of not more than a single word, des¬ 
criptive of some natural phenomenon, such as the 
rising or setting of the sun, the struggle between light 
and darkness, and the alternate victory of the one or 
the other. The science of Language has established 
the fact that all names were general terms; and one of 
the most eminent masters of the science 1 begins a work 
on “ Proper Names” by laying it down as a first princi¬ 
ple that for the etymologist there are no such things 
as “ proper names,” but only “ appellatives.” These 
appellatives, when applied to natural phenomena, are 
either such predicates as the most prosaic observer 
might use at the present day, or they are metaphorical. 
An early stage of language is always highly meta¬ 
phorical, its terms being derived from sensuous percep¬ 
tion, and being ill adapted to express abstract ideas. 
Many roots were required to express the different 
stages or determinations of a single notion. Even in 
reference to so simple a notion as that expressed by 
the verb to see , the Greeks had recourse to no less than 
three roots (in opdco, ocpofiat , eldov), according as the 
action was considered as continued, completed or 
momentary. We ourselves say I go, but I went; je 
vais, nous allons, j’irai. As the motives for applying 
an appellative to a phenomenon are many, it is evident 


1 Pott, ‘‘ Die Personennamen.'’ 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


I 11 


that many myths may refer to the same phenomenon 
under different names. And every myth which 
involves a metaphor naturally suggests a legend, 
which in its turn is susceptible of an indefinite amount 
of development in the hands of poets or other mytho- 
graphers, long after the primitive meaning of the myth 
has been forgotten. 

It is therefore only through a radical misconception 
of the nature of a myth that attempts can be made to 
discover a consistent system in the mythology of any 
country. One myth was originally quite independent 
of every other. 

Another serious mistake is to suppose that all the 
details of a mythological legend are of equal import¬ 
ance. The Psalmist speaks of a tabernacle in the 
heavens set for the sun, whom he compares to “ a 
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing 
as a strong man to run a race.” Call the sun the 
Bridegroom or the Racer (and he is so named in 
several mythologies), and a series of images will at 
once be suggested correlative to each of these names, 
and adventures will be invented to suit them. But 
these details are no real part of the myth, and fre¬ 
quently conceal its true meaning. One of the chief 
difficulties in dealing with a myth lies in distinguish¬ 
ing the essential from the non-essential portions of 
the legend to which it has given rise. 


I 12 


LECTURE III. 


On the other hand, the moment we understand the 
nature of a myth, all impossibilities, contradictions 
and immoralities disappear. If a mythological per¬ 
sonage really be nothing more than a name of the 
sun, his birth may be derived from ever so many 
different mothers. He may be the son of the Sky or 
of the Dawn or of the Sea or of Night. He may be 
identical with other mythical personages which are 
also names of the sun, and yet be absolutely different 
from them, as the midday sun differs from the rising 
and from the setting sun, or the sun of to-day from 
that of yesterday. He may be the husband of his 
own mother without the guilt or stain of incest. All 
myths are strictly true, but they can only be har¬ 
monized when translated into the language of physi¬ 
cal reality. 

All phenomena which attracted sufficient attention 
furnished matter for myths. It had been remarked, 
for instance, that certain stars never set, whereas all 
others, after performing their course, sink below the 
horizon. The Egyptians expressed this by the myth 
of the Crocodile of the West which fed upon the 
Achmu Uretu (the setting stars ). 1 Thunder and 
lightning, storm and wind and cloud and rain, were 

1 Todt. 32, 2. The translation of ax*nu uretu by “restless” is inad¬ 
missible. See M. Chabas, “ Papyrus Magique,” p. 84. We have 
nothing here to do with planets and fixed stars. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT, II3 

no doubt duly personified, but they occupy a very 
small part of the mythology, which is almost ex¬ 
clusively concerned with the regularly and perpetu¬ 
ally recurring phenomena. Whatever may be the 
case in other mythologies, “ I look upon the sunrise 
and sunset, on the daily return of day and night, on 
the battle between light and darkness, on the whole 
solar drama in all its details, that is acted every day, 
every month, every year, in heaven and in earth, as 
the principal subject ” 1 of Egyptian mythology. 

There can be no controversy about Ra and his 
the meaning of Ra. Ra is not only Family, 
the name of the sun-god, it is the usual word for sun. 
In other mythologies the sun-god is borne in a 
chariot or on horseback ; in Egypt, his course across 
the sky is made in a boat. The sky (Nu) is accord¬ 
ingly conceived as an expanse of water, of which the 
Nile is the earthly representative. Ra is said to pro¬ 
ceed from “ Nu, the father of the gods.” His adver¬ 
sary is Apap, who is represented as a serpent pierced 
with the weapons of the god. The conflict is not 
between good and evil, but the purely physical one 
between light and darkness. Shu and Tefnut are the 
children of Ra; Shu is Air, and Tefnut is some form 
of moisture, probably Dew . 2 


* Max Muller, " Science of Language,” Second Series, p. 565. 

2 In the Legend of the Destruction of Mankind, Ra calls before him 


LECTURE ILL 


“4 

Osiris and his The myth of Osiris, though much 

Family. 

more elaborate, has the,same meaning. 
Osiris is the eldest of the five children of Seb and Nut. 
“ He is greater than his father, and more powerful 
than his mother.” He wedded his sister Isis whilst 
they were yet in their mother’s womb, and their 
offspring was the elder Horus. Set and Nephthys, 
another wedded pair, are their brother and sister. 
In this myth the antagonist of Osiris is Set, by whom 
he is slain, but he is avenged by his son Horus, and 
he reigns in the nether world, like the Indian Yama, 
and judges the dead from his throne in the hall of the 
Two-fold Right. And this he does daily. 

The explanation of this myth exercised the imagi¬ 
nations of the ancients. The priests and poets of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties already identified 
Osiris with the highest of all Powers. In later times, 
as v/e see from the treatise ascribed to Plutarch, he 
was identified with various abstract “principles.” By 
the help of the light which comparative mythology 
supplies, we are enabled to arrive at a truer sense of 
the myth. 

The parents of Osiris are Seb and Nut, and about 
these there can be no mistake. Seb is the Earth, and 
Nut is Heaven. Seb is identified with the earth in 


Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, and the fathers and mothers who were with him 
when he was still in Nu. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


ll 5 

the older texts, and in the later ones “ the back of 
Seb ” is a familiar term for the earth. Seb is also the 
Egyptian name for a certain species of goose, and in 
accordance with the homonymous tendency of the 
mythological period of all nations, the god and the bird 
were identified; Seb was called “ the great cackler,” 
and there are traces of the myth of a “ mundane egg ” 
which he “ divided ” or hatched. Nut is the name of 
a female goddess , 1 frequently used synonymously with 
the other names of the sky, and she is as frequently 
pictured with her arms and legs extended over the 
earth, with the stars spread over her body. The mar¬ 
riage of Heaven and Earth is extremely common in 
mythologies; what is peculiar to the Egyptian myth 
is that Earth is not represented as the Mother of all 
things, Oed)v pyryp, aloy^ Oupavob dtrvspoevToz, but the 
Father , 2 and Heaven is here the Mother; though, as 
we have seen in speaking of Ra, Heaven was also 
conceived as a male power, like the Indian Varuna 
and the Greek Uranos. From the union of Seb and 
Nut sprung the mild Osiris, the Sun, the Isis, the 

1 In the legend of the Destruction of Mankind, Nu and Nut address 
each other as father and daughter. But in the Book of the Dead, 42, 20, 
Unbu (one of the names of Osiris) issues from Nu, his mother being Nut. 

2 There is indeed a passage (Duemichen, Hist. Inschr. II. 44 e) in 
which Seb seems to be called the mother of Osiris. But as the words 
are immediately followed by “whom Nut brought forth,” I suspect an 
error in the text. 


116 


LECTURE III ; 


Dawn, wedded before they were born, and the fruit of 
their marriage was Horus, the Sun in his full strength. 
Set the destroyer is also the son of Seb and Nut, but 
his triumph is in the west; he is Darkness, and his 
spouse Nephthys, a deity of mixed character, is the 
Sunset. There are the traces of a legend according 
to which Osiris mistook Nephthys for his wife Isis. 
Nephthys, who loved him, encouraged the illusion, 
and from their embraces Anpu (Anubis) was born. 
Anubis, like his mother, is a deity of a mixed cha¬ 
racter, partly belonging to the diurnal, partly to the 
nocturnal powers. It is said of him that “ he swal¬ 
lowed his father Osiris.” I believe that he represents 
the Twilight or Dusk immediately following the dis¬ 
appearance of the sun. 

I am quite aware that texts may be quoted to prove 
that Osiris is the Moon, but these texts belong to a 
pantheistic period in which the god was recognized 
under all forms . 1 It might rather be doubted whether 
the story of Osiris had not reference to the annual 
rather than to the daily sun. His death might be 
supposed to represent the reign of winter. Some of 
the Egyptian usages in commemoration of his death 
and resurrection, such as the sowing of plants and 

1 A hymn at Dendera says: " Hail to thee, Osiris, lord of eternity! 
When thou art in heaven thou appearest as the sun, and thou renewest 
thy form as the moon.” Mariette, Dendera, Vol. IV. 44 a. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


1 17 

watching their growth, might be cited in support of 
this view. But the closer we look at these matters of 
detail the less will they disturb our conviction that 
the victory of Set over Osiris is that of Night over 
Day, and the resurrection of Osiris is the rising of 
the Sun. And I do not think Osiris will be spoken 
of as dead throughout an Egyptian winter by any 
one who has had any experience of that delightful 
season. 

There is a passage in the Book of the Dead , 1 which 
says that “ Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found 
the soul of Ra there; each embraced the other, and 
became as one soul in two souls.” This may be a 
mythological way of saying that two legends which 
had previously been independent of each other were 
henceforth inextricably mixed 'up. This, at all 
events, is the historical fact. In the words of a 
sacred text, “ Ra is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris the 
soul of Ra.” 

But Horus also is one of the names 

Horus.* 

of the Sun, and had his myths quite 
independently of Ra or Osiris. The most prominent 

1 Ch. xvii. 1 . 42, 43. 

2 M. Lefebure has published several important essays illustrative of 
the myths of Osiris and Horus. I should be glad to find real evidence 
of allusions to lunar eclipses, but it is impossible to reconcile the lunar 
hypothesis about these myths with the most elementary astronomy. 
How can a lunar-eclipse, for instance, regularly coincide with a fixed 


118 


LECTURE III. 


ones in comparatively later times described his vic¬ 
tories over Set or the monster Tebha (the Typhon of 
the Greeks). But the victory of Darkness over Light 
was appropriately represented by the myth of the 
Blind Horus. An ancient text speaks of him as 
“ sitting solitary in the darkness and blindness.” He 
is introduced in the royal Ritual at Abydos, saying, 
“ I am Horus, and I come to search for mine eyes.” 
According to the 64th chapter of the Book of the 
Dead, “ his eye is restored to him at the dawn of 
day.” A legend contained in the 112th chapter of 
the same Book describes Horus as wounded in the 
eye by Set in the form of a black boar. Anubis 
fomented the wound, of which Horus appears at first 
to have thought him the author, 1 and according to 
another legend, Isis stanched the blood which flowed 
from the wound. But according to another account, 
Set swallowed the eye, and was compelled to vomit 
it from the prison in which he was confined, with a 
chain of steel fastened about his neck. The Eye of 
Horus is constantly spoken of as a distinct deity, 
terrible to the enemies of light. 

day in a month of thirty days? The synodical month is nearly of this 
length, but the eclipses depend upon the nodes. 

1 And he said, “ Behold, my eye is as though Anubis had made an in¬ 
cision in my eye.”—Todt. 112. Although Anubis in the sequel restores 
the eye, the allusion is clearly to his nocturnal power. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT 


119 

The conflict of Light and Darkness is represented 
in many other mythical forms. The great Cat in the 
alley of Persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Ra, 
crushes the serpent. In most parts of Egypt the sun 
sets behind a mountain-range; it is only in the north 
that the body of Osiris is said to have been plunged 
into the water. According to another legend, the 
crocodile Maka, the son of Set, devoured the arm of 
Osiris. .Other disastrous mutilations are described 
as befalling Osiris, Ra, Horus and Set, in their turn. 
Set and the other powers of darkness assumed the 
forms of fishes. Horus pursued them, and Set was 
caught in a net. 1 Horus, on the other hand, was 
changed into a fish, and was saved by his mother 
Isis. 

Set, though the antagonist of Light 
in the myths of Ra, Osiris and Horus, 
is not a god of evil. He presents a physical reality, 
a constant and everlasting law of nature, and is as 
true a god as his opponents. His worship is as an¬ 
cient as any. The kings of Egypt were devoted to 
Set as to Horus, and derived from them the sove¬ 
reignty over north and south. On some monuments, 
one god is represented with two heads, one being, 
that of Horus, the other that of Set. The name of 
the great conqueror Seti signifies, “ he that is devo- 

1 Indra used a net as well as other weapons against his foes. 


120 


LECTURE III. 


ted to Set.” It was not till the decline of the empire 
that this deity came to be regarded as an evil demon, 
that his name was effaced from monuments, and 
other names substituted for his in the Ritual. 

The Egyptian god Tehuti is known 

Thoth. 

to the readers of Plato under the name 
of Thoyth. He is the Egyptian Hermes, and the 
name of Hermes Trismegistos is translated from the 
corresponding Egyptian epithet which is often added 
to the name of Tehuti. He represents the Moon, 
which he wears upon his head, either as crescent or 
as full disk; and as our word moon is derived from 
the root ma, to measure, and “ was originally called 
by the former the measurer, the ruler of days and 
weeks and seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord 
of their festivals, and the herald of their public assem¬ 
blies,” 1 we shall not be surprised if we find a very si¬ 
milar account of the etymology and attributes of Te¬ 
huti. There is no such known Egyptian word as tehu 
but there is tepi, which is a dialectic variety, and is ac¬ 
tually used as a name of the god. This form supplies 
us with the reason why the god is represented as an 
ibis. As Seb is the name both of a goose and of the 
Earth-god, so is Techu the name of an ibis and of the 
Moon-god. Tehuti probably signifies, as M. Na- 
ville has suggested, the “ ibis-headed.” But it means 

1 Max Muller, Science of Language,” I. p. 7. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


121 


something besides. Techu is the name of the instru¬ 
ment 1 which corresponds to the needle of the balance 
for measuring weights. The ancient Egyptian cubit 
is called the cubit of Techu. He is called “the 
measurer of this earth.” He is said to have “ calcu¬ 
lated the heaven and counted the stars,” to have 
“calculated the earth and counted the things which 
are in it.” 2 He is “the distributor of time,” the 
inventor of letters and leafning (particularly of 
geometry), and of the fine arts. Whatever is without 
him is as though it were not. All this is because 
the Moon is the measurer. 

It is impossible, after this rapid, but, I trust, not 
deceptive glance at the myths of some of the chief 
Egyptian gods, to withstand the conviction that this 
mythology is very similar indeed to that of the Indo- 
European races. It is the very same drama which is 
being acted under different names and disguises. The 
god slays the dragon, or a monster blinds, maims or 
devours the god. What bright god is born from the 
embrace of Heaven and Earth, and who is his twin 
sister and spouse ? Who are his two wives ? Who 
is the “ husband of his own mother ” ? Who is the 
divine youth who emerges from the lotus-flower? 

1 The instrument itseli is a vase, and the primitive meaning of the word 
text* is to be ‘'full;” hence the sense of drunkenness which it sometimes 
has. Dr. Duemichen has thoroughly illustrated the use of the word in 
his *' Bauurkunde v. Dendera,” and in the Zeitsclirift, 1872, p. 39. 

a See Brugsch, Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 9. 

6 


122 


LECTURE III. 


And what is the lotus? Which is the god who, 
having performed his course from east to west, is 
worshipped as the king and judge of the departed? 
Sanskrit scholars who do not know a word of Egyp¬ 
tian, and Egyptologists who do not know a word 
of Sanskrit, will give different names to these person¬ 
ages. But the comparative mythologist will hardly 
hesitate about assigning his real name to each of 
them, whether Aryan or Egyptian. One of the most 
curious instances of the identification of myths is to 
be seen in a bas-relief at the Louvre, wherein the 
legend of our own St. George and the Dragon, which 
is at bottom the same as that of Indra and Vritra, 
is represented by Horus spearing a crocodile. 1 

The Lectures on the Science of Language delivered 
nearly twenty years ago by Professor Max Muller, 
have, I trust, made us fully understand how, among 
the Indo-European races, the names of the sun, of 
sunrise and sunset, and of other such phenomena, 
came to be talked of and considered as personages of 
whom wondrous legends are told. Egyptian mytho¬ 
logy not merely admits, but imperatively demands, 
the same explanation. And this becomes the more 
evident when we consider the question how these 
mythical personages came to be invested with the 

1 “ Horus et St. George d’apres un bas-relief inedit du Louvre,” by M. 
Clermont Ganneau, in the Rev. Arch. 1876, September and December. 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


123 


attributes of divinity by men who, like the Egyptians, 
as we have seen, had so lively a sense of the divine. 
Here we are at once brought into contact with the 
notion of the Reign of Law. 

M. de Rouge, in the extract which I The Rei of 
have read from his Lecture, quotes the Law - 
Egyptian expression, “ the Only Being, living in 
truth,” “le seul Etre, vivant en verite.” But the 
original words, an% em maat , mean very much more 
than “ living in truth.” A more grammatically exact 
translation would be, “ who lives by truth,”or “whose 
existence depends upon truth;” but “ truth ” is not 
the exact meaning of maat. When speaking of the 
moral code recognized by the Egyptians, I used the 
word “Right” as including both Truth and Justice. 
But it now becomes necessary to define the term more 
precisely. 

Maat as a noun signifies a perfectly straight and 
inflexible rule. It is evidently, I believe, derived from 
the root ma , “ to stretch out,” or “ hold out straight 
before one,” “ protendere,” as in the act of presenting 
an offering, ma hotep} “ I have stretched out ( ma-na ) 

my hand, as the master of the crown,” says the Osiris 
in the Book of the Dead. 2 “ Tehuti has extended to 
her ( ma-nes ) his hand,” is said in one of the texts at 

1 Sharpe and Bonomi, “ Sarcophagus,’’ pi. 8, lines 5 and 8. 

2 Todt. 40, 2, comp, with 12, 2. 


LECTURE III. 


I 24 

Dendera . 1 With this notion of stretching out are con¬ 
nected, in the Egyptian as well as in the Indo- 
European and the Semitic languages, the notions of 
“straight, right, righteous, true, rule, row, order.” 
Our own word rule , like the Latin regula and rectus, 
is derived from the Aryan root ar^, from which we 
have in Sanskrit nnge, I stretch myself (like the 
Greek dpeyofiai), rigus straight, right, righteous; ra^is, 
a line, a row; in Zend, erezu, straight, right, true, and, 
as a substantive, finger . 2 In Gothic we have rak-ja 
(uf-rak-ja, stretch out), rach-ts, right, straight . 3 The 
Egyptian maat is not only Truth and Justice, but 
Order and Law, in the physical as well as in the 
moral world. It is in allusion to the fixed and un¬ 
alterable laws of nature (which of course were very 
imperfectly known to them) that the Egyptians used 
the expression an% em maat , “ living or existing by or 
upon rule,” which, if not actually a term equivalent 
to divinity, is at least with them the attribute most 

1 Other words connected with the same root are maat, an offering, 
7 r pddemc, ma signifying that part of the forehead from which the horns 
project in cattle, ma a fair wind, and ma an extent of water. 

2 A finger is sometimes in Egyptian found as a “ determinative ” of 
ma. 

3 Curtius, “ Gr. Et.’’ p. 184. Compare Gesenius on the Hebrew 

Jp#—“ ordine S. ad lineam disposuit , struxit, nostr. reihen, richten, gr. 
T&GOO, T&TT(i) (vie. r? recta protendit, extendit, et in linguis indo- 
germ. Reiche [Reige, Riege] reihen intens. rechen; rego [non pro 
reago ut nonnulli volunt] r^la, rectus." “ . . . or do, strues.” 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


!25 


constantly connected with it. It was in consequence 
of the persistent recurrence of the same physical phe¬ 
nomena in an order which never varied and was never 
violated, that the Sun and Moon and other powers, 
even the days of the month and the twenty-four hours 
of day and night, became the great and everlasting 
gods. 

There is another* Egyptian expression extremely 
frequent in the religious texts, the accurate meaning 
of which has never been recognized. Em ser en 
maat x is now generally-allowed to mean “rightly,” 
“ perfectly,” but it does not literally signify “ in cal- 
culo veritatis,” as Brugsch says in his Lexicon. Ser 
is the measuring line used by builders, and em ser 
signifies “ ad amussim,” “ nach der Schnur,” “ au 
cordeau,” “ according to the line; ” hence, “ with the 
strictest accuracy.” The whole expression therefore 
means, “ according to the strict accuracy of Law,” to 
which is constantly added, hehu en sep , “ millions of 
times.” Maat is Law , 2 not in the forensic sense of a 

1 P. 575. The sign which I read ser was formerly read hebs, which 
has the same ideograph. But “ in calculo ” implies the very different 
word hesb , and if blundering scribes sometimes misspelt these words, this 
is no reason for attributing the ideograph of hebs in the very best texts to 
a word which is only confounded with it by a clerical error. The con¬ 
nection of ideas between hesb and ser is however very intimate. See 
Todt. ioo, 8, hesb su Tehuti em ser maat. 

2 The opposite notion to Maat , considered as Law, is asfet, lawless¬ 
ness, disorder, iniquity. 


126 


LECTURE III. 


command issued either by a human sovereign au¬ 
thority or by a divine legislator, like the Law of the 
Hebrews, but in the sense of that unerring order 
which governs the universe, whether in its physical 
or in its moral aspect. This is surely a great and 
noble conception. 

You will not be surprised to learn that Maat is 
spoken of as a mythical personage. She is called 
mistress of heaven, ruler of earth and president of 
the nether world, which indeed is recognized as her 
special domain. She is called the daughter of Ra, 
but she might as truly have been called his mother. 
Each of the great gods is said to be neb maat , liter¬ 
ally, “ lord or master of Maat; ” but it is equally 
said that “ she knows no lord or master.” If she is 
brought into closer connection with Thoth than with 
other gods, this is because Thoth is essentially the 
“ Measurer; ” and if certain texts speak of the winds 
as proceeding from either Thoth or Maat, it is not 
because these personages are wind-gods, but because 
the cardinal points from which the winds come are 
naturally the domain of the god who has measured 
and mapped out the universe, and because the winds 
themselves are obedient to Law. 

Such were the gods of Egypt. They were not the 
ghosts of ancestors or other dead men, or represen¬ 
tatives of abstract principles, as ancient and modern 


THE GODS OF EGYPT. 


I27 


philosophers have supposed, nor were they impure 
spirits or foul demons, as an uncritical though not 
unnatural interpretation of their Scriptures led the 
early Christian missionaries to imagine. “All the 
gods of the nations are nought,” says the Psalmist ; 
but the Greek and Latin translators used the word 
“ daemonia,” which in Christian times never meant 
anything but “ devils.” The gods of the Egyptian, as 
well as those of the Indian, Greek or Teutonic my¬ 
thologies, were the “ powers ” of nature, the “ strong 
ones,” whose might was seen and felt to be irresist¬ 
ible, yet so constant, unchanging and orderly in its 
operations, as to leave no doubt as to the presence of 
an ever living and active Intelligence . 1 

1 Much in this Lecture will be new, and perhaps appear doubtful, to 
my learned colleagues in Egyptology, especially to those whose studies 
have not led them into the field of Indo-European philology. From the 
time of Champollion, the Egyptian language and literature have been 
almost exclusively illustrated from Semitic, not to say purely Hebrew, 
sources. This is a fatal mistake, though perhaps inevitable at first. I 
have for years been humbly endeavouring to bring the Science of Lan¬ 
guage to bear upon Egyptian philology, and I trust this Lecture will at 
least induce some eminent scholars to study the Egyptian by the light of 
other mythologies. M. Le&bure has already done most valuable work 
in this direction. M. Grebaut, though confining himself entirely to 
Egyptian mythology, has, in his “ Hymne k Aramon-Ra,” published in 
the Bibliotheque de Vecole des hautes etudes , and in an article of the 
Melanges d’Archeologie, tome II. p. 247, demonstrated several impor¬ 
tant truths, and he has very nearly approached the true conception of 
Maat. As regards the identification of certain deities, I have very nearly 


128 


LECTURE III ; 


been anticipated by M. Naville, who in his admirable work on the 
“ Litany of the Sun,” p. 38, is inclined to consider Isis and Nephthys 
“ comme personnifiant des etres dont chacun caracterisait plus particu- 
lierement l’un des horizons; peut etre l’etoile du matin et celle du soir, 
ou encore le crepuscule du matin et celui du soir; les deux formules de 
la litanie se comprendraient alors facilement But he puts Isis at the 
west, and Nephthys at the east. 


LECTURE IV. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 


A belief in the persistence of life 
after death, and the observation of reli- Sepulchral Rltes * 
gious practices founded upon this belief, may be dis¬ 
covered in every part of the world, in every age, and 
among men representing every degree and variety of 
culture. Classical scholars are familiar with the 
terms of Inferiae and Parentalia, names given by the 
Romans to the propitiatory offerings which they pre¬ 
sented to the manes of their departed ancestors. 
The Greeks had their imycff/iaza. The worship of 
the Fravashis by the Iranians, and that of the Pitris 
by the Hindu, are evidences of the antiquity in the 
Indo-European family of this form of religion, many 
traces of which remain to this day in the practices 
of European nations. And the celebration of rites in 

honour of their ancestors is perhaps the most ancient 
6* 129 




130 


LECTURE IV. 


institution of the oldest civilization now in existence, 
that of China. 

The habits of savages without a history are not in 
themselves evidence which can in any way be de¬ 
pended upon. To take for granted, that what the 
savages now are, perhaps after millenniums of degra¬ 
dation, all other people must have been, and that 
modes of thought through which they are now pass¬ 
ing have been passed through by others, is a most 
unscientific assumption, and you will seldom meet 
with it in any essay or book without also finding 
proof that the writer did not know how to deal with 
historical evidence. Authorities are sure to be 
quoted which the historian knows to be worthless, 
and evidence in itself irreproachable will be com¬ 
pletely misunderstood. The universality of a belief 
or practice, even among savages, would of course, if 
proved, be a very weighty fact, tending to prove that 
the belief or practice in question had its origin either 
in reason or in tradition. It is, however, impossible 
to exaggerate the value of Sir Henry Maine’s protest 
against “ the very slippery testimony concerning 
savages which is gathered from travellers’ tales.” 
“ Much,” he says, “ which I have personally heard 
in India bears out the caution which I gave as to the 
reserve with which all speculations on the antiquity 
of human usage should be received. Practices re- 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 31 

presented as of immemorial antiquity and universally 
characteristic of the infancy of mankind, have been 
described to me as having been for the first time re¬ 
sorted to in our days through the mere pressure of 
external circumstances or novel temptations.” 

Far more important than any single instance from 
the descriptions of modern savages is the ancient 
tomb of Aurignac. “ If the fossil memorials,” says 
Sir Charles Lyell, “ have been correctly interpreted 
—if we have before us at the northern base of the 
Pyrenees a sepulchral vault, with skeletons of human 
beings consigned by friends and relatives to their last 
resting-place—if we have also at the portal of the 
tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indica¬ 
tions of viands destined for the use of the departed 
on their way to a land of spirits, while among the 
funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to 
chase the gigantic deer, the cave lion, the cave bear 
and woolly rhinoceros—we have at last succeeded in 
tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more in¬ 
teresting still, a belief in a future state, to times long 
anterior to those of history or tradition.” 1 2 


1 “ Village Communities/’ p. 17. 

2 “Antiquity of Man,” p. 193, 1863. I leave the words of the above 
passage as they were delivered. I was not aware at the time that the 
evidence of M. Lartet had been contested, and that Sir Charles Lyell 
had in his last edition admitted this evidence to be doubtful. See the 


132 


LECTURE IF. 


But if from pre-historic we pass to historic times, 
we at once meet on Egyptian ground with an entire 
system of notions wonderfully (indeed, almost incred¬ 
ibly) similar to those entertained by our Indo-Euro¬ 
pean ancestors. There is, however, no confirmation 
of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s hypothesis, that the rudi¬ 
mentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead 
ancestors. If the Egyptians passed through such a 
rudimentary form of religion, they had already got 
beyond it in the age of the Pyramids, for their most 
ancient propitiation of ancestors is made through 
prayer to Anubis, Osiris, or some other gods. The 
deceased is already described in the funereal inscrip¬ 
tion as “ faithful to the great God.” And in no case 
can it be proved that the propitiation of departed 
ancestors preceded a belief in divinity of some other 
kind. 

The Tombs and “ The Egyptians,” we are told by 
their inscriptions. Diodoros, “call their houses hostelries, 
on account of the short time during which they in¬ 
habit them, but the tombs they call eternal dwelling- 
places.” The latter part of this is strictly and literally 
true ; pa feta , “ eternal dwelling-place,” is an expres¬ 
sion which is met with at every instant in the inscrip¬ 
tions of the earliest period, descriptive of the tomb. 

article of Mr. W. B. Dawkins, on ‘‘The Date of the Interment in the 
Aurignac Cave,” in Nature , Vol. IV. p. 208. 


C O MM UNI ON WITH THE UNSEEN WO ELD. 133 

The word dnchiu, which literally signifies the “ living,” 
is in innumerable places used emphatically for the 
“ departed,” who are enjoying everlasting life. The 
notion of everlasting life, cinch feta , is among the few 
words written upon the wooden coffin, now in the 
British Museum, of king Mykerinos, of the third 
pyramid. Neb duck, “ Lord of life,” is one of the 
names given to the sarcophagus. In the very ancient 
inscription of Una, the coffin is called hen en anehiu , 

the chest of the living.” It is only evil spirits who 
are spoken of in the sacred writings of the Egyptians 
as “ the dead.”* 

The ancient Egyptian tomb 1 consisted of three 
essential parts: (1) a chamber above ground, entered 
by a door, which appears to have always remained 
open; (2) a corridor, now commonly known as the 
serdab , in the interior of the masonry, containing 
statues of the deceased; and (3) a pit, sunk to a con¬ 
siderable depth through the rock, and communica¬ 
ting with the sepulchral vault hollowed in the rock, 
and containing the sarcophagus of the dead. The 

1 The most complete account of early Egyptian tombs is found in M. 
Mariette s article, li Sur les tombes de I’ancien empire qu’on trouve h 
Saqqarah,” in the Revue Archeologique , 1869, Vol. I. pp. 7—22, 81—89, 
much of which is repeated in his admirable description of the Museum 
of .Bulaq. See also Duemichen, “ Ueber die Tempel und Graber im 
alten Aegypten,'* the very interesting text of his Photographische Resul- 
tate, and Brugsch, “ Die Aegyptische Graberwelt.” 


134 


LECTURE JV. 


chamber (which sometimes consisted of several 
rooms) was the only part accessible to human foot. 
Its walls were often covered with pictures, but 
the most essential portion of it was a tablet 
invariably facing the east. At the foot of this, 
lying on the ground and made of granite limestone 
or alabaster, was a table for the offerings. The 
serdab , or corridor, was only accessible through a 
small aperture, through which the smoke of incfense 
might be conveyed from the chamber to the statues 
which the solid walls concealed from sight. The 
representations upon the walls of the chamber repro¬ 
duce the entire domestic and social life of the period. 
It is from these pictures that Sir Gardner Wilkinson 
has drawn up his admirable work on the Manners 
and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, and de¬ 
scribed the Egyptian house, with its furniture, its 
gardens, its farm-yards, its vineyards—the occupa¬ 
tions of its owner and the amusements of his guests— 
the games within and out of doors, the hunting and 
fishing, the agricultural operations, the numerous 
arts, manufactures and trades—all of which are repre¬ 
sented to the life. Short inscriptions accompany the 
pictures; the names of men, animals and other objects 
are written over them; descriptive titles are con¬ 
stantly given, such as “ploughing,” “mowing,” “the 
slaughter of a young bull; ” sometimes scraps of 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 35 

dialogue occur, generally of a very trivial character. 
“ Hold hard,” a master says to his servant; and the 
lad replies, ari heset-ek, “Thy will be done.” One 
man says, “ This donkey is wild; ” and another 
replies, “ I will tame him.” A peasant is engaged in 
combing flax, and he says to another who brings him 
a fresh supply of stalks, “ If you bring me eleven 
thousand and nine, I will comb them.” The dther man 
rather rudely replies, “ Make haste, and none of your 
chatter, you prince of clod-hoppers! ” The tomb in 
which this dialogue occurs is rich in texts of the 
same kind. It was here that Champollion found the 
“ Song of the Oxen.” But all these representations 
are really subordinate to one end, and that is the wor¬ 
ship of the departed. The slaughter of the ox or the 
antelope is not introduced for its own sake, but really 
as a sacrifice; and the pictures of men bearing joints 
are on the point, as they are sometimes actually 
represented, of offering them to the image of the 
deceased. An endowment was always intended to 
provide for the celebration of these propitiatory ser¬ 
vices, as well as for keeping the tomb in perpetual 
repair. 

The usual form of inscription over the lintel of the 
tomb, and which is often repeated within the cham¬ 
ber, is as follows : 

“ A royal table of propitiation grant Anubis, who 


LECTURE IV. 


136 

dwells within the divine house. May sepulture be 
granted in the nether world, in the land of the divine 
Menti , 1 the ancient, the good, the great, to him [the 
departed] who is faithful to the great God. May he 
advance upon the blissful paths upon which those 
advance who are faithful to the great God. May the 
funeral oblations be paid to him at the beginning of 
the year, on the feast of Tehuti, on the first day of 
the year, on the feast of Uaka, on the feasts of the 
Great and of the Small Heat, on the apparition of 
Sechem, at the feast of Uah-ach , at the feasts of each 
month and the half-month and every day.” 

Such is the ordinary formula, which however ad¬ 
mits of variations and additions, especially in the later 
inscriptions. I will mention one or two not more 
recent than the sixth dynasty. One of them consists 
in the repetition of the words em hotep, “ in peace,” 
like the of the Hebrew and the In pace of the 
Christian funereal inscriptions. It is extremely fre¬ 
quent in Egyptian texts, and may really be the origin 
of the Jewish and Christian form of petition for the 
departed, though the primitive signification has been 
altered. 

1 In later times this name was written Amenti , and was supposed to be 
derived from the word amen , ic conceal.” This meaning is implied in 
the royal tombs at Biban-el-moluk. But in the oldest tombs the name 
is distinctly written Menti, and the name of the presiding divinity x ent 
menti. See Denkmaler, ii. pi. 45, 48, 101. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 137 

There is also a petition that the departed may 
“traverse the firmament” “in company with the per¬ 
fect spirits of the nether world.” The word ba , which 
I translate firmament, properly signifies “steel .” 1 
The notions of blue and of steel seem to have been 
associated in the Egyptian mind, and the colour of 
the sky suggested the notion of a metallic firmament. 
The word spirit is given as the translation of the 
Egyptian chu , but this name for the dead signifies 
“glorified one.” 

A third petition is, that the deceased should be 
proclaimed glorified, or, as we should say, canonized 
(.sechut ), by the ministers of religion, the cher-heb or 
the smer , priestly officials who are frequently named 
in the inscriptions, especially in connection with the 
rites of the dead. A considerable number of priests 
bearing these and other titles, representing various 
functions, took part in these ceremonies, but the pre¬ 
sence of a priest was not always indispensable. The 
offerings might be made, or rather had to be made, by 
the sons and daughters and other members of the 
family of the deceased. The pictures in which no 
minister of religion is seen (and they are perhaps the 
most numerous), all either directly represent religious 

1 Cf. the Homeric cnSr/peov ovpavov , Od. xv. 329. xvii. 565. We have 
already met with another conception of heaven, namely, as an ocean 
upon which the sun travels in his bark. 


138 


LECTURE IV. 


rites or preparations for them. The very games and 
dances are religious ceremonies. In the tomb of Te- 
bahen, the statue of the deceased is represented as 
standing within a shrine, before which a table of pro¬ 
pitiatory offerings is laid. Men are advancing up the 
inclined plane which leads to it, bearing fowls and legs 
of oxen. On one side, other men are kneeling, with 
sacrificial cakes or vases of water in their hands; 
whilst on the other side, women are performing a 
solemn dance, also in presence of a table of offerings. 
In the great tomb of Nahre-se-Chnumhotep at Beni- 
hassan, women are tumbling in presence of a solemn 
religious service, in which libations are being poured 
by the “ /^-minister.” The words written over the 
scene are part of a prayer which is supposed to be 
recited, “ Let the gates of heaven be opened that the 
god may enter!” 

The later form of the sepulchral inscriptions, as 
found on the tablets of our museums, is, more or less 
fully, as follows: 

“ A royal table of propitiation grant Osiris, dwell¬ 
ing in Amenti, Lord of Abydos [or of Tattu]:” other 
divinities are often added. “ May he [or they] grant 
the funereal oblations, bread, beer, oxen, geese, wine, 
milk, oil, incense, wrappings, all gifts of vegetation, 
whatever heaven gives or earth produces, to enjoy 
the Nile, to come forth as a living soul, to come in 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WOE LB. I 39 

and go out at the Ristat, that the soul may not be re¬ 
pulsed at the gates of the nether world, to be glori¬ 
fied among the favored ones in presence of Un-nefer, 
to receive the aliments on the altars of the great God, 
to breathe the delicious breezes of the north wind, 
and to drink from the depth of the river.” Then fol¬ 
lows the name of the person, generally accompanied 
by that of his mother; but on almost all tablets after 
the time of Amenemhat I., these celestial gifts are 
said to be given not to the person, but to the ka of 
the person,—an important expression which has been 
misunderstood till quite lately. 

This prayer is called the Suten-hotep-ta } from its 
first words; and as we speak of saying an “Our Fa¬ 
ther,” the Egyptian texts speak of “ a son making a 
Suten hotep-taP The great tablet of Abydos has for 
title, “The making of a Suten-hotep-taP &c., to the 
kings of Egypt by king Seti. 

The greatest importance was attached to the per¬ 
manence of the tomb, to the continuance of the reli¬ 
gious ceremonies, and to the prayers of passers-by. 
We constantly find men praised for having made to 
live again the names of their father and mother or of 
their “fathers.” There is a very common formula 
stating that the person who raised the tablet “ made 
it as a memorial to his fathers who are in the nether 
world, that he built up what he found imperfect, and 


140 


LECTURE IV. 


renewed what was found out of repair.” In the great 
inscription at 'Benihassan, Chnumhotep says, “ I made 
to flourish the name of my father, and I built the 
chapels for his ka. I caused my statues to be con¬ 
veyed to the holy dwelling, and distributed to them 
their offerings in pure gifts. I instituted the officiating 
priest, to whom I gave donations in lands and pea¬ 
sants. I ordered funeral offerings for all the feasts 
of the nether world, at the feast of the New Year, at 
the beginning of the year, at the feast of the Little 
Y ear, at the feast of the Great Year, at the feast of the 
great joyful feast, at the feast of the Great Heat, at the 
feast of the Little Heat, at the feast of the five supple¬ 
mentary days of the year, at the feast of Shetat, at 
the feast of the Sand, at the twelve monthly feasts, at 
the twelve half-monthly feasts, at all the feasts of the 
plain and the mountain. If it happens that the priest 
or any other cease to do this, then may he not exist, 
and may his son not sit in his seat” 

The great inscription of Rameses II. at Abydos 
minutely relates the provision made by that sove¬ 
reign for the worship of his father, Seti I. 

“ The most beautiful thing to behold,” says Ra¬ 
meses, “ the best thing to hear, is a child with a 
thankful breast, whose heart beats for his father. 
Wherefore my heart urges me to do what is good 
for Mineptah. I will cause them to talk forever and 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 141 

eternally of his son who has awakened his name to 
life. My father Osiris will reward me for this with a 
long existence, like his son Horus. Let me do what 
he did, let me be excellent as he was excellent, 
for my parent, I, who am a scion of the sun-god 
Ra ”_ 

“ Awake,” he says to his father, “ raise thy face to 
heaven, behold the sun, my father Mineptah, thou 
who art like God. Here am I who make thy name 
to live. I am thy guardian, and my care is directed 
to thy temple and thy altars which are raised up 
again.I set apart revenues for thee for thy wor¬ 
ship daily, to be just towards thee.I appoint for 

thee the priests of the vessel of holy water, provided 
with everything for sprinkling the water on the 

ground.I dedicated to thee the lands of the 

south for the services of thy temple, and the lands of 
the north they bring to thee their gifts before thy 
beautiful countenance. I gathered together the peo¬ 
ple of thy service one and all, assigning them to the 

prophet of thy temple.I dedicated to thee ships 

with their freight on the great sea.I fixed for 

thee the number of the fields .... great is their num¬ 
ber according to their valuation in acres. I provided 
thee with land-surveyors and husbandmen, to deliver 
the corn for thy revenues.” 

He proceeds to enumerate the barks, with their 







142 


LECTURE IV. 


crews, labourers for the felling of wood, herds of all 
kind of cattle, tributes of birds, fishermen. The 
temple is provided with all kinds of guilds of handi¬ 
craftsmen, men-servants and women-servants working 
in the fields. 

“But I obtain by my prayers the breath of life at 

thy awaking.So long as I stay on earth, I will 

offer a sacrifice to thee. My hands shall bring the 
libations for thy name to thy [remembrance] in all 
thy abodes .” 1 

It is only natural to suppose that the religious 
endowments here mentioned must in the course of 
years come to an end. There is, however, in the 
Louvre a monument which shows the astonishing 
length of time during which institutions continued 
to be respected. The kings who built the Pyramids 
endowed a priestly office for the purpose of cele¬ 
brating the periodical rites in their behalf. The same 
priest often officiated for several departed kings. The 
tablet of the Louvre shows that Psamtlk, son of 
Ut’ahor, who lived in the time of the twenty-sixth 
dynasty, was priest of Chufu or Cheops of the great 
Pyramid, and of two other sovereigns of the same 
period, who certainly had lived and endowed his 
office more than two thousand years before his time. 

1 Brugsch Bey, “ History of Egypt,” Vol. II. pp. 36, 40, English 
transl. 



COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 143 

We have actually the tombs of some of his prede¬ 
cessors who filled the office almost immediately after 
the death of the sovereign. 

Innumerable inscriptions call upon the passers-by 
to invoke the gods in behalf of the departed. “ O all 
ye who are living upon earth,” “ who love life and hate 
death,” “ you who are in the service of Osiris or of 
Anubis,” “ priest, prophet, scribe, spondist, ministrant, 
male or female, every man and every woman passing 
by this tomb, statue, tablet or shrine, whether you be 
passing northwards or southwards—as you desire to 
enjoy the favour of the king—or as you desire your 
names to remain upon earth, or to transmit your dig¬ 
nities to your children—or as you love and obey the 
gods of Egypt, or as you wish to be blessed by the 
gods of your cities, or by your wish to possess a part 
of the divine abode of Osiris who dwells in Amenti— 
or to be faithful to the great God—or as you wish to 
flourish upon earth and pass on to the blessed—say a 
Suten-hotep-ta ,” the entire formula being repeated, or 
merely (as an abbreviation) “thousands of oxen, 
geese, bread, beer,” &c. 

Such is the burden of all these funereal tablets. No 
one tablet contains all that I have quoted, and no two 
tablets are exactly alike, but all are made upon the 
same model and contain some portions of the whole. 
Many centuries after the construction of a tomb, 


144 


LECTURE IV. 


Egyptian travellers have left a record upon its walls 
of the splendour of the sacred abode, of the abund¬ 
ance of the materials which they found provided for 
the fulfilment of the rites for the departed, and of 
their own repetition of the funereal formula . 1 The 
Suten-hotep-ta was supposed to have been delivered 
by divine revelation. An ancient text speaks of a 
“ Suten-hotep-ta exactly corresponding to the texts of 
sacrificial offerings handed down by the ancients as 
proceeding from the mouth of God.” 2 

It was most important that a man should have a 
son established in his seat after him who should per¬ 
form the due rights and see that they were performed 
by others ; that he should, as it is expressed, “ flourish 
in the children of his children.” The duty of per¬ 
forming these rites comes immediately after that of 
worshipping the gods, in the enumeration of virtuous 
actions. It is enforced in the moral writings as well 
as in the theology of ancient Egypt. 

“ Give the water of the funereal sacrifice to thy 
father and mother who repose in the tomb; renew 

the water of the divine oblations.Neglect not 

to do it, even when thou art away from thy dwelling. 
Thy son will do it for thee in like manner .” 

These words are taken from the Maxims of Ani. 

1 Champollion, Notices , Vol. II. pp. 423—425. 

2 Denkm. iii. pi. 13. 



COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 145 

We find the following among the good wishes 
made for a person: “ Mayst thou receive the lustral 
water from the hands of thy son each tenth day. . . . 
May every heir who offers the libation to his own 
father, contribute his offering of water to thy ka; 
and as he propitiates his father or buries his mother, 
may thy name be uttered together with his own 
father .” 1 

On the other hand, the wish that a man may not 
have a son after him is the most terrible of impreca¬ 
tions. 

“ Whoever shall preserve this inscription,” we read, 
“ in the temple of Amon Ra, the Lord of Senneferet, 
he shall be favoured by Amon Ra, and his son shall 
be established in his place; but whosoever shall re¬ 
move this inscription from the temple of Amon Ra, 
Amon Ra will curse him, and his son shall not be 
established in his place .” 2 

Another text says : 

“ Whoso destroys this inscription, Bast, the great 
goddess of Bubastis, will annihilate him for ever; he 
will never have a son after him .” 3 

The trustees of a religious foundation are threat¬ 
ened with the most tremendous penalties in case of 
their not carrying out the intentions of the founder; 

, 1 Louvre, Inv. 908. 


7 


2 Zeitschrift f. agypt. Sprache, 1871, p. 60. 
8 lb. p. 8. 


146 


LEC1URE IV. 


they are to “be delivered over to Sutech in the day 
of his wrath, whose serpent diadem will spit out 
flames of fire upon their heads, annihilating their 
limbs and consuming their bodies. May they not 
receive the reward of righteousness; may they not 
partake of the feast of the blessed; may the water 
from the spring of the river not refresh them; may it 
not come to pass that their posterity should sit in 
their place.” But to faithful trustees the most splen¬ 
did prospects are held out, one of which is, “ Son of 
son, heir of heir, will be born to him.” “ May your 
bodies,” they are finally told, “ rest in the nether 
world of Amend after a course of a hundred and ten 
years, and may the sacrificial gifts likewise be multi¬ 
plied to you.” 

The inscription of Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, in 
the fourth century before Christ, ends as follows : 1 

“ The land of Buto, whoever tries to plan the re¬ 
moval of any part thereof, may he incur the ban of 
those gods who are in Pe, may he be accursed by 
those who are in Tep, may he be in the flame of 
Aptaui in the day of her terrible wrath, may he have 
no son or daughter to give him the lustral water.” 

One of the most recent of the Ptolemaic tablets 
records the fulfilment of a promise made in a dream 
by the god I-em-hotep to Pasherenptah with refer- 

1 Zeitschrift f agypi. Sprache , 1871, p. 60. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 14 7 

ence to the birth of a son, and it contains the invoca¬ 
tion, “ Oh, all ye gods and goddesses who are un¬ 
named, let a child remain in my place for ever and 
ever .... keeping alive the name of my house.” 

The lustral water offered upon earth to the dead 
had its counterpart in the other world. The most 
usual representation of this is the picture in which 
the goddess Nut pours out the water of life to the de¬ 
ceased, from the interior of a sycamore-tree. In a 
picture published by M. Chabas , 1 the deceased kneels 
before Osiris, and receives from him the water of life 
from a vessel under which is written anch ba , “ that 
the soul may live.” The picture is taken from the 
mummy of a priest who lived twelve hundred years 
before Christ. But the same idea occurs in a Greek 
inscription found at Saqara by Mr. C. Wescher. 
'‘She lived twenty-five years,” the inscription says, 
“ and Osiris beneath the earth gave her the refreshing 
water .” 2 

Now let me remind you that the oblation of cakes 
and water is one of the five great ceremonies of the 
Hindus, and, as Professor Max Muller told you last 
year, that “ without a son to perform the funeral rites, 
a Brahman believed that he could not enter into 
heaven.” Here is undoubtedly a most remarkable 
coincidence between two religions which never came 

1 Revue Arch. 1862, Vol, I. p. 370. 


2 lb. 1864, Vol. II. p. 222. 


148 LECTURE IV 

into contact. Nor can any even indirect influence of 
one upon the other be considered admissible. It is 
the logical process which has taken the same direc¬ 
tion in both, and it can be traced in other branches 
of the Indo-European family ^ 

Readers of ecclesiastical history will remember the 
fierce persecutions to which the first converts to 
Christianity were subjected in Persia, chiefly in con¬ 
sequence of the doctrines they held on the subject of 
virginity and celibacy, so much at variance with a re¬ 
ligion which considered children as “ a bridge leading 
to heavenbut as this religion has special grounds 
of its own for condemning celibacy, over and above 
those which it derives from the Indo-European tradi¬ 
tions, it is instructive to read Dr. Hearne’s remarks on 
the traditions of Greece and Rome. 

“ The personal motives which led to marriage were 
in the early world very strong. The popular senti¬ 
ment is emphatically expressed by Isaios when he 
says, ‘ No man who knows he must die can have so 
little regard for himself as to leave his family without 
descendants, for then there would be no one to ren¬ 
der him the worship due to the dead.’ A remarka¬ 
ble illustration of this sentiment occurs on a memo¬ 
rable occasion in Grecian history. When Leonidas 
arrived at the scene of his desperate defence of Ther¬ 
mopylae, he was accompanied, says the historian, 'by 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD . 149 

the 300 men which the law assigned him, whom he 
had himself chosen from among the citizens, and who 
were all of them fathers with sons living.’ According 
to modern notions, a forlorn hope would naturally be 
composed of men who had not given hostages to for¬ 
tune. Such, however, was not the light in which the 
latter presented itself to the Greek mind. The hu¬ 
man plant had flowered. The continuance of the 
house was secure. It was therefore comparatively 
of little moment what befel the man whose duty to 
his ancestors had been fulfilled. In the aspect of the 
case now before us, the fact that a man married or 
that he remained single, was not a matter which af¬ 
fected himself alone. The condition of his ancestors, 
the permanence of his household, depended upon his 
conduct. We cannot, therefore, doubt that celibacy 
was regarded as a deadly sin. Even the State, 
although it was slow to interfere in matters merely 
privati juris , lent its aid to enforce this primary duty. 
Solon prohibited celibacy. The laws of the Dorians, 
the most conservative of the Hellenes, contained 
similar provisions. Criminal proceedings might be 
taken, both at Athens and' at Sparta, against those 
who married beneath them, and against those who 
did not marry at all. There is evidence that a pro¬ 
hibition to the same effect existed in early Rome.” 1 

1 “The Aryan Household : an Introduction to Comparative Jurispru¬ 
dence,” p. 71. 


LECTURE IV. 


150 

I have thought it well to insist upon this feature of 
the Egyptian religion, in consequence of the import¬ 
ance attached to the celibate life in later times in four 
different religions: first, in the great system of Budd¬ 
hism ; secondly, in Judaism; thirdly, in Christianity; 
and fourthly, in Manicheism. Christian monasticism, 
as is well known, first grew up in Egypt, and was 
introduced into Europe through Christians from 
Egypt But the monastic life and the word monas¬ 
tery already existed before Christianity among the 
Jewish ascetics, whose mode of life is described by 
the Alexandrian Philo. 1 It certainly was not from 
the Egyptian religion that monastic institutions were 
derived. 2 

It is no doubt extremely natural, when phenomena 
are discovered which bear close resemblance to each 
other, to look out for some historical connection be¬ 
tween them. But in the history of human thought, 
the supposition of such a connection frequently proves 
to be an illusion. No historical connection can pos¬ 
sibly be admitted between the Egyptian and the 

1 Tom. II. p. 475, 15. ’Ev ekcwtij 6e oltdg, egtiv oiKtjfia , iepov, o kc- 
fairat OE/ivelov nal fxovaoTr/piov, ev fiovov/iEvai ra tov fiiov ge/xvov jxvg- 
Trjpia teTlovvtcu. 

2 The Greek papyri speak of a class of persons called oi ev Kardxy, ni 
mTEXopiEvot , who led a cloistered life ; that is to say, they were restricted 
to the precincts of the temple to which they were attached. But they 
were not ascetics or necessarily celibates. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 5 x 

Indo-Kuropean doctrines of the necessity of mar- 
riage, and all the doctrines in favour of religious celi¬ 
bacy may very probably turn out to be historically 
independent of each other. The late Professor Baur, 
of Tubingen, wrote an exceedingly able work, in 
which he endeavoured to trace the Manichean sys¬ 
tem to Buddhism. 1 His arguments were admitted 
by Neander and many other learned men \ among 
others, by Dr. Pusey in this country. Admirable, 
however, as Baur s analysis of the Manichean system 
must be confessed to be, his conception of Buddhism 
was radically false. This is not to be wondered at, 
for the book was written before any authentic infor¬ 
mation on the subject of Buddhism was yet accessi¬ 
ble, and the principles which in the Gnostic and 
Manichean systems were wrongly ascribed to Budd¬ 
hism were taken from the Platonic, Neo-Pythagorean 
or some other Hellenic philosophy. And all at¬ 
tempts to discover Buddhist influences in Jewish or 
Christian theologies will, I am sure, prove equally 
abortive. What they have in common is human 
reason, working according to the same natural laws. 
The question, however, is one which should be de¬ 
cided upon strictly historical evidence, independently 

1 I have discussed this question at length in an article on “ Oriental¬ 
ism and Ancient Christianity,” in the Home and' Foreign Review, July 
.1863, p. 151. 


*52 


LECTURE IV 


of all dogmatic prejudice. Not a trace of the philo¬ 
sophic theories peculiar to the Buddhist canon has 
yet been discovered in any of the philosophic or reli¬ 
gious systems of the Western world, and why should 
we be alarmed if it could be proved that the sublime 
precepts of humanity, purity, charity and unworldli¬ 
ness, inculcated by the moral code of Sakya Muni 
had historically paved the way for Christianity ? 1 

i “ Le bouddhisme r^forme, £tabli au Thibet sous la supreme direc¬ 
tion du grand lama, a vivement excite la curiosite des Europeens. Les 
premiers missionaries qui en eurent connaissance au dix-septi£me si£cle, 
ne furent pas peu surpris de retrouver au centre de l’Asie des monast^res 
nombreux, des processions solennelles, des pelerinages, des fetes re- 
ligieuses. une cour pontificale, des colleges des lamas superieurs, elisant 
leur chef souverain ecclesiastique et p&re spirituel des Thibetains et des 
Tartares en un mot un organisation assez semblable h. celle de l’eglise 
romaine.” Hue, “ Le Christianisme en Chine en Tartarie et au Thibet,” 
tome II. p. 9. The French philosophers of the last century inferred 
from this that Christianity was derived from Buddhism, and “ qu le culte 
catholique avait ete caique sur les pratiques lamaiques.” But M. Hue 
shows that the most striking points of resemblance are owing fo changes 
in the Tibetan worship since the time of Kubla Khan, in the thirteenth 
century, who had had frequent relations with Christian missionaries, and 
may have wished to imitate their institutions. The intercourse between 
the Mongolian conquerors and Western Christendom was very active at 
this period. Mongolian envoys repeatedly visited Rome, and some were 
present at the great Council of Lyons. Some points of resemblance are 
certainly more ancient, but it is worthy of notice that the resemblances 
are much more numerous as regards the Latin than as regards the 
Eastern churches. This would not be the case if Buddhism were the 
fountain-head. On matters such as spiritual direction, both religions 
have developed very similar methods quite independently one of the 


\ 

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 53 

I now come to another very remarkable point of 
coincidence between the Egyptian and the Indo- 
European religions. 

When we speak of a man of genius, Genius^ ° f 
of a genius for poetry or for warfare, or 
of being inspired by the genius of the place, we are 
often forgetful of the original use of the word genius. 
The genius was a god, “ sanctus et sanctissimus 
deus,” as Servius calls him, in the religion of the 
Romans, worshipped with libations, incense and gar¬ 
lands of flowers. Every man had his own genius, 
which was to be propitiated by sacrificial offerings, 
and so had every god and even every locality. The 
genius was a sort of spiritual double of each indi¬ 
vidual. Men swore by their own genius, by the 
genius of Rome, of the gods, or of the emperor. 
Very similar facts are to be found in the Greek and 
in the Persian religions. The Fravishis in the reli¬ 
gion of Zoroaster were heavenly types of created 
things, whether gods, men, mountains, streams or 
other objects, and formed a divine society, the guard¬ 
ian angels, as it were, of the good creation. Each 
individual thing was furnished with its Fravishi. On 
the Persian monuments, especially those of Per- 
sepolis, the king’s Fravishi is represented standing 

other. In regard to the subject of the development of dogma, no his¬ 
tory is more instructive than that of Buddhism. 

7 * 


154 


LECTURE IV. 


close to the king, j ust as the royal ka is represented 
on Egyptian monuments down to the times of Ves¬ 
pasian. The notion was deeply rooted in all the 
branches of the Indo-European family, and has been 
preserved in many of the superstitions still current 
among us. You remember how in the novel of 
Waverley the Highland chieftain saw his own wraith. 
The water-wraith would in classical language be 
called the genius of the stream or of the billow's, and 
this not in mere poetical phraseology, but in the 
severe prose of every-day life. The belief itself is 
not limited to the Egyptian and Indo-European 
families, but is nearly universal. “ Everywhere,” as 
Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us, 1 “we find expressed or 
implied the belief that each person is doubleand 
that when he dies, his other self, whether remaining 
near at hand or gone far away, may return, and con¬ 
tinues capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his 
friends.” But the development of this belief among the 
Egyptians is in manyof its details surprisingly similar 
to the corresponding process among Indo-Europeans. 

The Egyptian word corresponding to the Latin 
genius is ka. It original signification, as I have 
recently endeavoured to show, in a paper read before 
the Society of Biblical Literature, 2 is image. The 

1 Fortnightly Review , May I, 1870, p. 537. 

2 Transactions , Vol. VI. pp. 494—508. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WOE ID. I 5 5 

use of the Greek ecdcoXou and the Latin imago in the 
sense of ghost is well known . 1 2 The oblations which 
in the funereal formulae are made to the ka of the 
departed are really made to his image. It is quite 
true that, as Dr. Hincks pointed out many years ago 
the word ka was not introduced into the Suten-hotep- 
ta till the twelfth dynasty; but the word itself in its 
religious signification is as old as the language, as far 
back as we can trace it, and it enters with that signifi¬ 
cation into a large number of proper names of the 
earliest times f so that at all events no new doctrine 
or practice was introduced when idolatry in the 
strictest sense of the term, namely, the worship of 
idola, was in so many words made part of the reli¬ 
gious prayers of the Egyptians. 

1 TsyAe pe elpyovat eldula Kapdvruv. 

Iliad, xxiii. 72. 

E IduTov ' A pyov yr/yevovg. A 2 sch. Prom. 568. 

Infelix simulacrum atque ipsius umbra Creusae 

Visa mihi ante oculos, et nota major imago. 

JEn. ii. 772. 

Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago. 

Ib. vi. 464. 

2 The hen ka, or minister of the ka, is represented on the oldest monu¬ 
ments. In Denkmaler , ii. pi. 23, he occurs three times presenting offer¬ 
ings. In pi. 25 he is at the head of a procession of persons, each bearing 
offerings; he himself is pouring lustral water. Elsewhere he is repre¬ 
sented offering incense; in pi. 58 he is doing so to statues of the de¬ 
parted. 


LECTURE IV. 


156 

It is not to be supposed that so intelligent a people 
as the Egyptians were ignorant of the absurdity of 
propitiating the wooden or stone images of their 
ancestors or of themselves. It is the living image 
which is said to be worshipped, and was supposed to 
reside in the wood or stone. There is an ancient 
text 1 which, in reference to Ptah, the chief divinity of 
Memphis, whom the Greeks identified with Hephaes- 
tos as the inventor of the arts, distinctly speaks of 
the gods as being made through his agency to dnter 
into their bodies, namely, their images of wood or 
stone. 

When enumerating the experiences which tend to 
generate the belief in a double personality, Mr. Her¬ 
bert Spencer speaks of the shadow which, following 
a savage everywhere and moving as he moves, 
suggests to him the idea of his duality, the shadow 
being perhaps considered as a specific something 
which forms part of him; and he adds : 

“ A much more decided suggestion of the same 
kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face 
and figure in water, imitating him as it does in his 
form, colors, motions, grimaces. When we remember 
that not unfrequently a .savage objects to have his 
portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries 
away a representation of him carries away some part 

1 Sharpe, “ Egyptian Inscriptions,” Vol. I. pi. 30. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD . I 5 7 

of his being, we see how probably it is that he thinks 
his double in the water is a reality in some way 
belonging to him.” 

I quote these words in order to suggest to you the 
kind of impression made upon a people who must 
have worked through a long course of years before 
they produced such marvels of life-like reality as 
some of the portrait sculptures of the age of the 
Pyramids. The art of sculpture was intimately con¬ 
nected with their religion, and its merits and demerits 
arise from this connection. It is not true, as is com¬ 
monly supposed, that the Egyptians were not able, 
like the Greeks, to represent in sculpture motion and 
activity. They did this, and they did it wonderfully 
well, as small statutes in the Museum at Bulaq 
abundantly show; but most of the statues of this 
description have perished, like the private houses to 
which they belonged. But the statues of the gods 
and ancestors were intended to represent, not the 
concrete activity of a single moment, but the abstrac¬ 
tion and repose of eternity. 

As the Iranian Fravishi is represented accompany¬ 
ing the Persian king, so is the Egyptian ka, or royal 
living image or genius, depicted in numberless re¬ 
presentations. As the Roman swore by the genius 
of the emperor, so did the Egyptian by the ka of his 
king. As the Roman appeased his genius, so is the 


158 


LECTURE IV. 


Egyptian king frequently sculptured in the act of 
propitiating his own ka. Votive tablets are addressed 
to the royal ka in company with Ptah or other gods. 
Each of the gods had his ka or genius. And as the 
Persians, Greeks and Romans, had their local genius, 
so had the Egyptians. The kau, like the genii, manes 
and lares (who are radically identical), formed a whole 
class of divine beings, who are mentioned in thou¬ 
sands of inscriptions as “ the kau who live everlast¬ 
ingly.” A well-known and interesting tablet contains 
the prayer, “ May I journey upon the everlasting 
road in company with kau and glorified ones.” 1 

Not the least curious coincidence between Egyp¬ 
tian and European thought is the use of the words 
genius and ka to express mental gifts. “ Genius ” is 
not used in this way in classical Latin, but by being 
made synonymous with spirit , and spirit being used 
as in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah (“the spirit of 
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and 
might, the spirit of knowledge, of the fear of the 
Lord ”), genius has come to signify a divine gift. 
Now the Egyptian word ka had certainly acquired 
this secondary signification as early as the time of 
Rameses II., 2 and I have but little doubt, though the 
proof is not absolute, that this signification already 
existed in the earliest times known to us. 


1 Den km. iii. 114. 


2 lb. iii. 194. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 59 


The anthropology of the Egyptians 
was very different from that recognized 


Souls, Sha¬ 
dows, Appa¬ 
ritions. 


in our modern systems of philosophy. 

We are in the habit of speaking of man as consisting 
of body and soul, the soul being considered the im¬ 
material part of man. We should be astonished at a 
person calling himself a Christian and yet denying 
the immateriality of the soul. Yet this belief was 
not always recognized by the defenders of Chris¬ 
tianity as a true one. M. Guizot shows, in his sixth 
Lecture on the History of Civilization in France, that 
the earliest doctors of the Church were strongly im¬ 
pressed with the conviction of the material nature of 
the soul, and that it was only by slow degrees that the 
opposite opinion prevailed. God alone was thought 
to be immaterial by nature, and it was only as rela¬ 
tive to gross matter that angels, spirits and souls 
were allowed to be called immaterial or corporal . 1 

The disembodied personality of each individual 
was therefore supposed by the Egyptians to be pro¬ 
vided with a material form and substance. The soul 
had a body of its own, and could eat and drink. We 
are unfortunately prevented, through want of ma¬ 
terials, from accurately determining the relation be¬ 
tween a man’s soul and his ka. His shadow was also 
considered an important part of his personality, and 


Compare Petavius, De Angelis, I. iii. 12. 


i6o 


LECTURE IV. 


was restored to him in the second life. The Book of 
the Dead treats the shadows as something sub¬ 
stantial. 

We shall not be surprised to find the belief in ap¬ 
paritions of the dead. There is a letter in one of 
the papyri of the Museum of Leyden in which a 
man complains bitterly of the persistent annoyance 
caused to him by his deceased wife . 1 

The most terrific form, however, of 

Possession. 

annoyance is that caused by what 
we commonly call possession. We are accustomed 
to hear of possession by evil spirits only, but this is 
because from a Christian point of view possession by 
spirits is necessarily incompatible with the goodness 
of the spirits; but the Greek dacjua>v was not neces¬ 
sarily an evil spirit, nor was the Egyptian chut. 
There is an interesting inscription now preserved in 
the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, the translation 
of wdiich was first given by Dr. Birch . 2 It records 
the possession by a spirit of the princess of Bechten, 
an Asiatic country which has not yet been satisfac¬ 
torily identified. She was connected by marriage 

1 u L’epoux se plaint des mauvais precedes de l'epouse defunte dont k 
ce qu’il parait la mort ne l’a pas suffisamment debarasse.” M. Chabas, 
in his Introduction to the Papyri of Leyden, p. 71. 

2 The inscription has been repeatedly translated. See “ Records of the 
Past,” Vol. IV. p. 53. A still more recent translation is that of Brugsch 
Bey, in his History of Egypt.” 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 6 1 

with the court of Egypt. Her sister had been mar¬ 
ried to one of the kings of the twentieth dynasty. 
She had fallen ill, and an Egyptian practitioner who, 
at her father’s request, had been summoned to see 
her, declared that she was possessed by a spirit (chut) 
with which he was himself unable to cope. The 
image of the god Chonsu , 1 one of the divine triad of 
Thebes, was solemnly sent in his ark, accompanied 
by a talisman of the same god under a different title, 
for the purpose of exorcising the princess, and the 
spirit yielded at once to the superior divinity of such 
a god, who, speaking through his prophet, ordered 
that a sacrifice should be offered to propitiate the 
spirit. The inscription assures us that during the 
time that the god and the spirit were in presence of 
each other, the king of Bechten and all his army 
were in a state of excessive terror. The result, how¬ 
ever, was so satisfactory, that he kept the Theban 
god by him for upwards of three years, and would 
probably never have allowed him to return, had he 
not been terrified by a dream ; in consequence of 
which the god was sent back to Egypt with presents 
of great value. 

The belief in dreams, as revelations Dreams, 

from a world quite as real as that 

l Chonsu is the moon, and one of his attributes is hesb aha , the reck¬ 


oner of time. 


162 


LECTURE IV. 


which we see about us whilst waking, was shared by 
the ancient Egyptians. The great tablet which is 
buried in the sand before the great Sphinx at Gizeh, 
records a dream in which the God appeared to Te- 
hutimes IV., whilst yet a prince, spoke to him as a 
father to a son, and promised him the kingdom, the 
white and the red crown, with the throne of Seb, and 
the earth in its length and breadth. This promise 
was made on the condition that Tehutimes should 
clear away the sand which then as now encumbered 
the mighty image of the god. King Mer-en-Ptah 
II., was encouraged by the god Ptah in a dream, and 
directed in his warfare against the northern invaders 
of Egypt. 

One of the many valuable tablets found by Mari- 
ette Bey at Gebel Barkal is well known under the 
name of Stele du Songe. It belongs to the Ethiopian 
period, and records an event which happened in the 
first year of a king (Nut) of the seventh century 
before. “His Majesty had a dream in the night. 
He saw two serpents, one at his right hand and the 
other at his left. And when he awoke he found 
them not. Then he said, ‘ Let these things be ex¬ 
plained to me at once.’ And they explained them, 
saying, ‘ The land of the South is thine, and thou 
shalt seize the land of the North, and the two crowns 
shall be set upon thy head. The earth is given to 


COMMUNION With the unseen world. I 6 3 


thee in all its length and its breadth.’ ” The tablet 
proceeds to describe the accomplishment of the 
dream, and the king’s gratitude as testified by his 
splendid donations. 

I have already quoted the Ptolemaic tablet which 
speaks of the fulfilment of a dream in which the god 
I-em-hotep promised a son to Pashenenptah. 

The Egyptians invoked their de- 
ceased fathers and the gods in attesta¬ 
tion of the truth of their assertions. Oaths were 
resorted to in legal investigations. The primitive 
sense of the word arqu , which signifies to swear, is 
“ bind.” To “ clear one’s-self by an oath ” is a recog¬ 
nized form of speech , 1 and it was no empty form, for 
the presence of the gods was strongly impressed upon 
the Egyptian mind. Even when the original mean¬ 
ing of a myth had not been entirely lost, the god was 
no longer identified with the physical phenomenon, 
but was supposed to be a living personal power con¬ 
nected with it. The absence of the sun was compati¬ 
ble with the presence of the sun-god Ra. 

. , . . Presence of the 

The presence of the gods is every- Gods . 
where taken for granted, but the calen¬ 
dar of lucky and unlucky days contained in the 
Fourth Sallier papyrus, and translated by M. Chabas, 
supplies a large amount of evidence as to the popular 
1 See Brugsch, 7 ,eitschrift , 1868, p. 73 * 


LECTURE IV 


164 

belief in the immediate intervention of the gods in 
human affairs. The days of the year are marked as 
lucky or unlucky according as they commemorate 
events in the legendary history of the war between 
the powers of Light and those of Darkness. But 
there are incessant cautions about leaving the house 
or looking at certain objects on days when certain 
gods are visiting the earth. Whatever was seen on 
some days was sure to be of prosperous omen; on 
other days, the sight of a flame or of a rat, the touch 
of a woman or the getting into a boat, might prove 
fatal. 

“ Do not go out of thine house at eventide ” on the 
15 th Paophi; “ the serpent that comes forth at even, 
whoever sees him, his eye is injured on the spot.” 

On the 23rd of the month Choiak, a man is 
blinded if the eyes of certain deities fall upon him. 

On the 28th day of the same month it is unsafe to 
eat fish, because on this day the gods of Tattu assume 
the form of a fish. 

On the nth Tybi, “Approach not any flame on 
this day; Ra is there for the purpose of destroying 
the wicked.” 

On the 9th Pharmuti, “ Do not go out by night; 
Ra is coming forth on his way to Ha'i-ren-sen.” 

On the 24th Pharmuti, “ Do not pronounce the 
name of Set aloud.” 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 65 

The superstition of the Evil Eye naturally arose 
from a doctrine which led to such prescriptions. 
The Egyptian proper names bear distinct witness to 
the existence of this superstition. 

Our word angel is derived from the Angels. 
Greek ayyzXoz, which is the literal ren¬ 
dering of the Hebrew malach , a messenger or envoy. 
This latter word is used in the Bible not only for 
human envoys, either of private individuals or of the 
king, but of supernatural beings sent by God to ac¬ 
complish His purposes. The Egyptian language has 
a word, ( aput ) which is used exactly in the same 
manner. It occurs repeatedly in the Book of the 
Dead, particularly in the sense of messenger of divine 
vengeance. The Maxims of Ani speak of the Angel 
of Death. 

The notion of Destiny, which plays Destiny, 

so important a part in Greek mytho¬ 
logy, does not appear to have been foreign to Egyp¬ 
tian thought. In two of the romantic tales which 
have reached us, the Hathors appear in the character 
of the Fates of classical mythology, or the Fairies of 
our own folk-lore. In the tale of the Two Brothers, 
they foretell a violent death to the newly-fashioned 
spouse of Bata. In the tale of the Doomed Prince, 
“ when the Hathors came to greet him at his birth, 
they said that he would either die by a crocodile, a 


LECTURE IV. 


166 

serpent or a dog.” Hathor, in the more recent theo¬ 
logy of the texts of Dendera, is not only the Sun 
himself with feminine attributes, but the universal 
God of Pantheism. Mythologically, however, she is, 
even in these very texts, the daughter of Ra and 
mother of Horus. Like Isis, she is in fact the Dawn, 
which from different points of view may be con¬ 
sidered either as the daughter or mother, sister or 
spouse, of the Sun. The Hathors, as represented in 
the pictures, have the appearance of fair and bene¬ 
volent maidens; they are not the daughters, of 
Night, like the Erinyes, but they are names of one 
and the same physical phenomenon, and are spoken 
of in very much the same relation to human des¬ 
tiny. 

The Homeric poems constantly speak of the pocpai 
together with the ijBpo(poiTi c iptw c. The Greek 
Moira has its counterpart in the Egyptian Shai. In 
the pictures of the Psychostasia which occur in many 
copies of the Book of the Dead, two personages are 
seated together; the male is called Shat , the female 
Renenet. They clearly preside over the meschen , or, 
as we should say, the cradle of the infant. Several 
important texts, which he has quoted in his recent 
translation of the tale of the Doomed Prince, have 
induced M. Maspero to translate Shai fate, and Ren¬ 
enet fortune. I believe that the word sha means 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 67 

“ divide, portion out; ” hence shai, “ the divider,” and 
intransitively “ the division, part, lot, fate.” Renenet , 
as quoted by M. Maspero, may fairly be translated 
“ fortune,” but it has several other well-known mean¬ 
ings. It is used in the sense of “ young ” and 
“ maiden; ” and Renenet is the name of the goddess 
of the eighth month and of harvest. All these mean¬ 
ings can be harmonized if we think of the Greek <bpa y 
wpaiot;. Hora is the time fixed by natural laws} the 
fitting time; it is also used in the sense of the spring 
or prime of life; f] wpaia is the season of corn and 
fruit-ripening. The name Renenet is surely well 
chosen for a goddess presiding over birth. But she 
is also represented as suckling the infant Horus. 
And in whose lap can the Sun be nursed more fitly 
than in that of the Dawn ? 

I must not quit this part of my sub- 

, t ,. _ The King’s Di- 

ject without a reference to the belief vinity> 

that the ruling sovereign of Egypt was 

the living image and vicegerent of the sun-god. He 

1 Compare the Hebrew .JTJ! “ tempus .... spec. (1) de anni tempore 
(gr. upa) .... (2) de tempore vitas humanae, max. de juvenili aetate 

puellas_Cf. HJ? juventus_(3) tempus jus turn, ut gr. Kaipdg . . 

(4) tempus alicujus, i. e. dies alie . . . . i. e. tempus supremum fatale alie, 
interitus ejus.” Gesenius. One of the kindred words is “TJT, “ indicavit 
deftnivit, constituit," and the corresponding Arabic verb u'ada, “prae- 
significavit aliquid, pec. boni, sed passim etiam minatus est aliquid 


mali.” 


168 


LECTURE III. 


was invested with the attributes of divinity, and that 
in the earliest times of which we possess monumental 
evidence. We have no means of ascertaining the 
steps by which the belief came to be established as 
an official dogma. It was believed in later times that 
the gods formerly ruled in Egypt; the mortal kings 
before Mena were called the “ successors of Horus.” 
But the kings who built the Pyramids and all the 
kings after them took the title of the “golden Horus;” 
Chafra and all after him were called “ son of Ra and 
natur aa, “ great god.” The sun in his course from 
east to west divides the earth and sky into two re¬ 
gions, the north and the south. The king of Egypt, 
as son and heir of the Sun, assumed the title of King 
of the North and of the South; not, as has generally 
been thought, with reference to Egypt, but, as Le- 
tronne contended and as M. Grebaut has convinc¬ 
ingly shown, with reference to the universe. 

The sovereign of Egypt is always said to be seated 
upon the throne of Horus, and he claimed authority 
over all nations of the world. He was the “ emana¬ 
tion ” of the sun-god, his “ living image upon earth.” 
“All nations are subjected to me,” says queen Hatasu 
on her great obelisk at Karnak. “ The god hath ex¬ 
tended my frontiers to the extremities of heaven;” 
“ the whole circuit of the sun he hath handed over 
( ma-nef ) to her who is with him.” “ I have ordained 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 69 

for thee,” says the god of Tehutimes III., “that the 
whole world in its length and in its breadth, the east 
and the west, should be thy mansion.” Amenophis 
II., is the “victorious Horus, who has all nations sub¬ 
ject to him, a god good like Ra, the sacred emanation 
of Amon, the son whom he begot; he it is who 
placed thee in Thebes as sovereign of the living, to 
represent him.” The king himself says, “ It is my 
father Ra who has ordained all these things. ... He 
has ordained for me all that belonged to him, the 
light of the eye which shines upon his diadem. All 
lands, all nations, the entire compass of the great cir¬ 
cuit [of the sun], come to me as my subjects.” “ He 
made me lord of the living when I was yet a child in 

the nest.He hath given me the whole world 

with all its domains.” The royal inscriptions are full 
of similar language, in the temples all the gods are 
represented as conferring upon the kings whatever 
gifts they have to bestow. There is a long inscrip¬ 
tion which appears first in honour of Rameses II., at 
Ipsambul, and is again found elsewhere, but set up to 
glorify Rameses III. The god says to the king, “ I 
am thy father; by me are begotten all thy members 
as divine; I have formed thy shape like the Mende- 
sian god; I have begotten thee, impregnating thy 

venerable mother.Around thy royal body the 

glorious and mighty assemble festively, the high 

8 



170 


LECTURE IV. 


goddesses, the great ones from Memphis and the 
Hathors from Pithom; their hearts rejoice ,and their 
hands hold the tambourine and hymns of homage 
when they see thy glorious form. Thou art lord like 
the majesty of the sun-god Ra; the gods and god¬ 
desses are praising thy benefits, adoring and sacrific¬ 
ing before thine image.” “ I give to thee the sky 
and what is in it; I lend the earth to thee and all that 
is upon it.” “ Every creature that walks upon two or 
upon four legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world 
I charge to offer her productions to thee.” 1 2 The 
same texts assign to the king the fourteen kas of Ra. 
I have already explained the meaning of ka, which 
corresponds in this place to our word “ spirit.” But 
Ra was said to possess seven souls ( baiu ) and four¬ 
teen kas? This explains the true meaning of the ex¬ 
pression, “ the souls of the king,” which has puzzled 
many scholars. It is very frequently found and at 
a very early period. The king had the seven souls 
of Ra. 3 

1 I quote, with slight alteration, the excellent English version given in 
Madame Duemichen’s translation of the a Flotte einer agyptischen 
Konigin.” 

2 Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. VI. p. 501. 

3 It is quite true, as M. Grebaut says, Melanges d'Arch. Vol. III. p. 
60, “ que le singulier [ba] variait avec la forme [baiu] pour l’expression 
de la meme idee et dans les memes formules.’’ This is also the case with 
ka and the plural kau. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 71 

That the sovereign in his official utterances should 
proclaim his divinity, is less to be wondered at than 
that private individuals should speak of him in the 
same style. But the doctrine was universally re¬ 
ceived. “ Thou art,” says an ode translated by M. 
Chabas and Mr. Goodwin, “ as it were the image of 
thy father the Sun, who rises in heaven. Thy beams 
penetrate the cavern. No place is without thy good¬ 
ness. Thy sayings are the law of every land. When 
thou reposest in thy palace, thou hearest the words 
of all the lands. Thou hast millions of ears. Bright 
is thy eye above the stars of heaven, able to gaze at 
the solar orb. If anything be spoken by the mouth 
in the cavern, it ascends into thine ears. Whatso¬ 
ever is done in secret, thy eye seeth it. O Baenra 
Meriamen, merciful Lord, creator of breath.” Mr. 
Goodwin, whose version I have been quoting, judi¬ 
ciously observes: 1 “ This is not the language of a 

courtier. It seems to be a genuine expression of the 
belief that the king was the living representative of 
Deity, and from this point of view is much more in¬ 
teresting and remarkable than if treated as a mere 
outpouring of empty flattery.” 

It must not be forgotten that the kings are fre¬ 
quently represented in the humblest postures of 
adoration before the gods. And they are also re- 
1 “ Records of the Past,” Vol. IV. p. 102. 


LECTURE IV 


I72 

presented as worshipping and propitiating their 
own genius.” 

The doctrine of the king’s divinity was proclaimed 
by works of art even more eloquently than by words. 
Dean Stanley writes as follows i 1 

“ What spires are to a modern city—what the towers 
of a cathedral are to its nave and choir—that the 
statues of the Pharaohs were to the streets and temples 
of Thebes. The ground is strewn with their fragments; 
there were avenues of them towering high above plain 
and houses. Three of gigantic size still remain. One 
was the granite statue of Rameses himself, who sat on 
the right side of the entrance to his place. By some 
extraordinary catastrophe, the statue has been thrown 
down, and the Arabs have scooped their millstones 
out of his face; but you can still see what he was— 
the largest statue in the world. Far and wide that 
enormous head must have been seen, eyes, mouth and 
ears. Far and wide you must have seen his vast 
hands resting on his elephantine knees. You sit on 
his breast and look at the Osiride statues which sup¬ 
port the portico of the temple, and which anywhere 
else would put to shame even the statues of the 
cherubs in St. Peter’s—and they seem pigmies before 
him. His arm is thicker than their whole bodies. 
The only part of the temple or palace at all in pro- 

1 “ Sinai and Palestine,” p. xxxv. 


COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 73 

portion to him must have been the gateway, which 
rose in pyramidal towers, now broken down, and 
rolling in a wide ruin down to the plain. 

Nothing which now exists in the world can give any 
notion of what the effect must have been when he was 
erect... No one who entered that building, whether it 
were temple or palace, could have thought of anything 
else but that stupendous being who thus had raised 
himself up above the whole world of gods and men. 

“ And when from the statue you descend to the 
palace, the same impression is kept up.Every¬ 

where the king is conquering, worshipping, ruling. 
The palace is the Temple, the king is Priest. But 
everywhere the same colossal proportions are pre¬ 
served. He and his horses are ten times the size of 
the rest of the army. Alike in battle and in worship, 
he is of the same stature as the gods themselves. 
Most striking is the familiar gentleness with which— 
one on each side—they take him by each hand, as 
one of their own order, and then in the next com¬ 
partment introduce him to Ammon and the lion¬ 
headed goddess. Every distinction, except of degree, 
between divinity and royalty, is entirely levelled, and 
the royal majesty is always represented by making 
the king, not like Saul or Agamemnon, from the head 
and shoulders, but from the foot and ankle upwards, 
higher than the rest of the people. 



i 74 


LECTURE IV. 


“ It carries one back to the days ‘ when there were 
giants on the earth.’ It shows how the king, in that 
first monarchy, was the visible God upon earth. No 
pure Monotheism could for a moment have been 
compatible with such an intense exaltation of the 
conquering king.” 


LECTURE V. 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 


The hopes and fears of the Egyptians with refer¬ 
ence to the world beyond the grave are revealed to 
us in various books or collections of writings which 
have been preserved to us by the tombs. 

Most of the evidence upon which the preceding 
Lectures are based has been taken from inscriptions 
sculptured or painted upon monuments of stone. 
But from the very earliest times to which it is possi¬ 
ble to go back, the Egyptians were acquainted with 
the use of the pen and of papyrus as a material for 
writing upon. Leather skins are also recorded to 
have been used for certain documents, and some of 
these have actually been preserved. But the dura¬ 
bility and other qualities of the papyrus recom¬ 
mended it for ordinary use beyond all other writing 
materials. The age of some of the papyri now in 

1 75 




176 


LECTURE V. 


our museums must necessarily seem fabulous to 
those whose experience has been limited to Greek or 
Latin manuscripts, which are considered as of most 
venerable antiquity if they were written in the fourth 
or fifth century after Christ, and, unless like the rolls 
of Herculaneum they can plead special reasons, are 
justly liable to suspicion if they lay claim to higher 
antiquity. There is probably not a Hebrew manu¬ 
script of the Old Testament which* is a thousand 
years old. The oldest existing Sanskrit manuscripts 
were written only a few centuries ago. Some of our 
Egyptian papyri are not less than four thousand 
years old. You must bear in mind the difference of 
the conditions under which the oldest manuscripts of 
each country have been preserved. The climate and 
the insects of India are absolutely destructive of all 
organic substances. The Hebrew Biblical manu¬ 
scripts of olden times have been intentionally de¬ 
stroyed, either out of reverence for a roll which was 
no longer in a condition suitable for use, or because 
the text of it, as being at variance with the Masoretic 
recension, was considered to be erroneous. The 
causes which have led to the destruction of Greek 
and Latin manuscripts, especially of the classical 
literature, are so obvious, that we can only wonder 
and be thankful that so much has been preserved. 
But the Egyptian manuscripts which we now possess 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. I 77 

—very few, alas! in comparison with the myriads 
which have perished—have been preserved by being 
kept from the air and damp in a perfectly dry. 
climate, hermetically sealed in earthen or wooden 
vessels or under mummy coverings, sometimes at a 
depth of ninety feet within the living rock, and still 
further protected by a thick covering of the pure, 
dry sands of the desert. 

The literature*which has thus been preserved and 
recovered is naturally for the most part of a religious 
character. 

It is perhaps necessary that I should apologize for 
using the term literature in speaking of compositions 
written in the hieroglyphic character. It is, I know, 
hard to make strangers to the writing understand 
that signs representing birds or beasts may be and 
are as purely alphabetic letters as our A, B, C. Such, 
however, is the fact, and every simple sound in the 
language, whether vowel or consonant, had its cor¬ 
responding letter. 1 The language had no medial 
sounds, so that if a g or a d had to be transcribed 
from a foreign language, a k or a / had to be substi¬ 
tuted. But it was from the alphabetic signs of the 


1 This is the case with the most ancient hieroglyphic writing known to 
us. If some scholars, like Dr. Hincks, have maintained that all the 
alphabetic signs were formerly syllabic, this is pure speculation, and may 
be true or false without interfering with the fact stated in the text. 

8 * 


LECTURE V 


178 

Egyptians that the Phoenicians derived their own, 
and from the Phoenician alphabet all those of Europe 
and Asia were derived: Greek, Etruscan, Roman, 
Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Sanskrit and Zend. The 
Egyptian writing, it is true, was not confined to alpha¬ 
betic characters. Some signs are syllabic, but these 
might at will be exchanged for the equivalent com¬ 
bination of alphabetic ones, just as the Greek abbre¬ 
viations which are so puzzling to some persons, 
either in the manuscripts or in the Aldine and other 
old editions of the classics, give place at the present 
day to the simple letters. And just as some persons 
saw considerable advantage in the use of Greek ab¬ 
breviations, every Egyptologist will tell you that, 
each syllabic character being necessarily confined to 
a limited number of words, he is able to detect at a 
glance over a page the presence of a word he is look¬ 
ing for. But syllabic signs were not used, any more 
than Greek abbreviations, in consequence of a want 
of signs to express purely alphabetic values. In this 
matter Egyptian orthography differs essentially from 
Chinese or Assyrian. It may, however, be objected 
that Egyptian writing admits a certain number of 
ideographic signs commonly called determinatives, 
which are not pronounced; a sign, for instance, 
representing two legs is placed after words signifying 
motion. But if we compare our own writing either 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. I 79 

with Sanskrit or with ancient Greek or Latin manu¬ 
scripts, we shall find plenty of ideographic signs in it. 
What else are notes of exclamation or of interroga¬ 
tion ? What are inverted commas and vacant spaces 
between the words ? Capital letters are to this day 
determinatives of proper names in English and 
French, and of substantives in German orthography. 
Our ideography is undoubtedly much simpler than 
the Egyptian, but it is quite as real. An English or 
French sentence written without it would be simply 
unintelligible to the ordinary English or French 
reader. I cannot therefore see what there is in the 
system of Egyptian writing which is' to prevent the 
Maxims of Ptahhotep, written in the age of the Pyra¬ 
mids, or the tales in the Berlin papyri, written more 
than two thousand years before Christ, from being 
considered literature as truly as they would be if they 
were now written in English, French or Italian. 

The majority of the manuscripts The Book of the 
which have been recovered from the Dead - 
tombs contain chapters of the collection generally 
known under the title of the Book of the Dead. 
These chapters, though apparently handed down at 
first by tradition, were committed to writing at a 
very early period. The vignettes which are found 
on so many copies, and which represent the burial 
procession, suggested to Champollion the name of 


i8o 


LECTURE V 


the “ Funeral Ritual.” Lepsius, however, pointed 
out the fact that the chapters are supposed to be re¬ 
cited by the deceased person himself in the nether 
world. M. de Rouge, though not objecting to the 
title “Book of the Dead,” proposed by Lepsius as 
more appropriate, nevertheless defended the use of 
the term “ Ritual ” on the ground that many chap¬ 
ters contain prescriptions for parts of the funeral, and 
certain prayers are formally mentioned as intended to 
be recited during the burial. Although the prayers 
are as a rule put into the mouth of the departed, 
they were certainly recited for him by those present. 
On the first vignette of the book, a priest is seen 
reading the formulary out of a book which he holds 
in his hands. And rubrics at the end of several 
chapters attach important advantages in the next 
world to the accomplishment of what has been pre¬ 
scribed in the foregoing text. 

It is not only in papyrus rolls that the Book of the 
Dead has been preserved. Many of the chapters are 
inscribed upon coffins, mummies, sepulchral wrap¬ 
pings, statues and the walls of tombs. Tombs of the 
time of, the twenty-sixth dynasty, like those of 
Bekenrenef or Petamonemapt, may be said to contain 
entire recensions of the book. The chambers of the 
latter of these tombs occupy together nearly an acre 
and a quarter of ground excavated in the rock, and 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 181 

every square inch of their high walls is covered with 
beautifully sculptured inscriptions from the Book of 
the Dead and other religious texts. 

The Egyptian title of the work is, “ Book of the 
peri em hru ” three very simple words, perfectly un¬ 
ambiguous when taken singly, but by no means easy 
of explanation when taken together without a con¬ 
text. Peri signifies “ coming forth,” hru is day, and 
em is the preposition signifying “ from,” but suscepti¬ 
ble, like the same preposition in many other lan¬ 
guages, of a great variety of uses. I will not take up 
your time with a discussion of the matter, but will 
simply tell you that peri em hru most probably means 
“ coming forth by day,” and that the sense of this 
expression can only be gathered from a study of the 
contents of the book so entitled. 

It is a very curious fact that, qqt of the many manu¬ 
scripts which are extant, no two contain exactly the 
same chapters or follow exactly the same arrange¬ 
ment. The papyrus of Turin, the facsimile of which is 
published by Lepsius, contains 165 chapters; and it 
is the longest known. A very considerable number 
of chapters, however, which are found in other manu¬ 
scripts, are not included in it. None of the copies 
therefore contains the entire collection of chapters. 
The date of the Turin papyrus is not known, but it 
certainly is not anterior to the twenty-sixth dynasty. 


182 


LECTURE V. 


The more ancient manuscripts contain much fewer 
chapters, and their order is quite different. The anti- 
quity of the chapters in the long recensions is not at 
all inferior to that pf those in the shortest recensions, 
and the chapters omitted by the Turin manuscript are 
as old as any. The oldest chapters of all are omitted. 
There is a great uniformity in the style and the 
grammatical forms of the language as compared with 
other productions of Egyptian literature, especially 
those more recent than the twelfth dynasty. Nothing 
can exceed the simplicity and the brevity of the sen¬ 
tences. And yet the difficulties which a translator 
has to overcome are very great. 

In the first place, the text is extremely corrupt. 
This unsatisfactory condition of the text is owing to 
different causes. The reasons which writers on He¬ 
brew, Greek or Latin palaeography have enumerated 
for the purpose of accounting for mistakes in manu¬ 
scripts, apply with much greater force to the funereal 
manuscripts of the Egyptians; for as these were not 
intended to be seen by any mortal eye, but to remain 
for ever undisturbed in the tomb, the unconscientious 
scribe had no such check upon his carelessness as if 
his work were liable to be subjected to the constant 
inspection of the living. But the most conscientious 
scribe might easily admit numerous errors. Many of 
our finest manuscripts in hieroglyphic characters are 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 183 

evidently copied from texts written in the cursive or, 
as it is called, the hieratic character. Many of the 
errors of the manuscripts are to be traced to a con¬ 
fusion between signs which resemble each other in 
hieratic but not in hieroglyphic writing. 

Besides the errors of copyists, there are different 
readings, the origin of which is to be traced to the 
period during which the chapters were handed down 
by word of mouth only. There are copies which bear 
evidence that a critical choice has been made between 
the different readings of a passage; but the common 
practice was to admit the inconsistent readings into 
the text itself, the first being followed by the words 
ki t'et y “ otherwise said.” This practice is of the most 
remote antiquity. The different readings of the 
seventeenth chapter according to the Turin text are 
already found in the text of that chapter which Sir 
Gardner Wilkinson" copied from the sarcophagus of a 
queen of the eleventh dynasty. 

Some of these variants have unquestionably arisen 
from the difficulty of understanding the ancient texts. 
I have no doubt whatever that some of the chapters 
of the Book of the Dead were as obscure to Egyp¬ 
tians living under the eleventh dynasty as they are 
to ourselves. The Book of the Dead is mythological 
throughout, and the true sense of a mythology dies 
away with the stage of*culture which has produced it. 


x 84 LECTURE V. 

A critical collation of a sufficient number of copies of 
each chapter will in time restore the text to as 
accurate a standard as could be attained in the most 
flourishing days of the Egyptian empire. This revi¬ 
sion of the text, which, for want of the requisite 
leisure, I was sorrowfully compelled to decline when 
it' was proposed to me by Dr. Lepsius at the Con¬ 
gress of Orientalists in 1874, is now being actively 
conducted by a most competent scholar, M. Naville, 
of Geneva. The most accurate knowledge of the 
Egyptian vocabulary and grammar will, however, not 
suffice to pierce the obscurity arising from what M. 
de Rouge called symbols or allegories, which are in 
fact simply mythological allusions. The difficulty is 
not in literally translating the text, but in understand¬ 
ing the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar 
words. Dr. Birch’s translation, 1 though made about 
thirty years ago, before some of the most important 
discoveries of the full meanings of words, may still be 
considered extremely exact as a rendering of the cor¬ 
rupt Turin text, and to an Englishman gives nearly 
as correct an impression of the original as the text 
itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been 
carefully taught the mysteries of his religion. Many 
parts of this translation, however, when most faithful 

1 Published in the fifth volume of Bunsen’s “ Egypt’s Place in Uni¬ 
versal History.” 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. I 85 

to the original, must, in consequence of that very 
fidelity, be utterly unintelligible to an English reader. 

The Book of the Dead, I repeat, is essentially my¬ 
thological, and, like all other Egyptian books of the 
kind, it assumes the reader’s thorough knowledge of 
the myths and legends. It is perhaps hopeless to 
expect that the legends will be recovered ; the allu¬ 
sions to them will no doubt always remain obscure. 
But the mythical personages who are constantly 
mentioned are the very gods about whom I spoke in 
the last Lecture: Ra and his family and the dragon 
Apap, Seb and his family, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus, 
Set and Nephthys. Thoth is one of the most im¬ 
portant names which occur. If the explanation 
which I gave of these personages is borne in mind, 
one great difficulty in the interpretation of the Book 
of the Dead will be overcome. The subject always 
is the contest between Darkness and Light. Ptah, 
“the Opener,” or “the Artist,” 1 and Chnemu, “the 

1 The Egyptian Ptah , like the Hebrew np£). \{aperuit), and in the 
Pihel terram aperuit aratro, aravit et (quod huic simile est) sculp sit, 
insculpsit turn ligno, tunc gemmis, etiam de ornandis lapidibus ad 
aedificandum. Gesenius] combines the sense of opening, or rather lay¬ 
ing open, with that of artistic work. The primitive meaning is opening, 
and there are well-known instances of it in old Egyptian, but it no longer 
exists in Coptic, which has only retained the sense of sculpere. It was 
because the Sun was the Opener that he was considered the Artist, 
especially in Memphis, the seat of the arts, of which he was the chief 
divinity. 


186 


LECTURE V 


Builder ,” 1 are only names of the Sun. Tmu , 2 “the 
Closer,” whose name occurs more frequently, is also 
one of the principal designations of the Sun. The 
fifteenth chapter gives an instance of the very differ¬ 
ent mythological treatment which the same physical 
phenomenon may receive, according as it is looked 
at from different points of view. Osiris, Horus and 
even Ra, suffer death or dismemberment; but Tmu 
is daily received into the arms of his mother Nut as 
he sinks into the west, and the arms of his father 
Tanen close over him. Neith, the great goddess of 
Sais, is rarely mentioned. She was the mother of 
the sun-god Ra, and is commonly supposed to repre¬ 
sent Heaven; but some expressions 3 which are 
hardly applicable to Heaven render it more proba¬ 
ble that she is one of the many names of the Dawn. 
The goddess Sechet is the raging heat of the 
Sun . 4 

1 The word is used as a common noun, and as the name of a profes¬ 
sion. See Brugsch, ‘‘ Bau u. Maasse des Tempels von Edfu,” in the 
Zeitsckr. 1872, p. 5. 

2 Otherwise written Atmu, the prosthetic vowel being prefixed as a 
support to the two consonants at the beginning of a word. For the 
meaning ,l shut,” 11 close,” of the word tmu , see Brugsch’s Lexicon. It 
is preserved in Coptic. 

3 For instance, the verb uben , expressive of an act of Neith (Todt. 114, 
1, 2), is inapplicable to Heaven, and is never used except for the sun¬ 
rise. 

4 This is universally allowed, but the etymology of Sechet is doubtful. 
Sex in old Egyptian signifies “ wound.” The Coptic has the word sesh- 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 1 87 


The gods of Thebes are conspicuous by their ab¬ 
sence from the Book of the Dead, or at least from al¬ 
most every chapter. Amon, the great god of Thebes, 
is named once only, and that in a chapter where 
the text is extremely doubtful. Chonsu, the moon- 
god, is only once named. But even the frequent oc¬ 
currence of these gods would not introduce a differ¬ 
ent series of conceptions. 

The Beatification of the Dead is, Beatification of 

the Dead. 

however, the main subject of every 
chapter. The everlasting life promised to the faith¬ 
ful may be considered in three of its aspects. 

I. The blessed is represented as en- ^ renewed 

joying an existence similar to that Existenoe“as 

1 tt 1 upon Earth.’’ 

which he had led upon earth. He has 

the use of all his limbs, he eats and drinks, and satis¬ 


fies every one of his physical wants, exactly as in his 
former life. His bread is made of the corn of Pe, a 
famous town of Egypt, and the beer he drinks is 
made from the red corn of the Nile. The flesh of 
cattle and fowl is given to him, and refreshing waters 
are poured out to him under the boughs of syca¬ 
mores which shade him from the heat. “ The cool 
breezes of the north wind breathe upon him. The 
gods themselves provide him with food: he eats from 


e f ; in the Thebaic version of the Bible, corresponding to the Greek 
avafyoaheiv. Her lion form is symbolic of solar heat. 


LECTURE V 


188 

the table of Osiris at Ristat, and from the tables of 
the sun-god Ra. He is given to drink out of vessels 
of milk or wine; cakes and flesh.are provided for him 
from the divine abode of Anubis. The gods of Heli¬ 
opolis themselves bring the divine offerings. He 
eats the bread which the goddess Ta'it herself has 
cooked, and he breathes the sweet odour of flowers. 
He washes his feet in silver basins which the god 
Ptah of Memphis, the inventor of all arts, has himself 
sculptured. Fields also are allotted to him in the 
lands of Aarru and Hotep, and he cultivates them. 
It is characteristic of an industrious and agricultural 
population that part of the bliss of a future state 
should consist in such operations as ploughing and 
hoeing, sowing and reaping, rowing on the canals and 
collecting the harvests daily. Warriors and kings 
who in the course of ages had risen to the head of a 
mighty empire, still looked forward toward these de¬ 
lights with the same religious faith which inspired 
them when, on the great panegyrical festival of the 
ithyphallic Amon, they received the iron sickle from 
the hands of a priestly ministrant, cut the ears of 
corn, and presented them as an offering to the god 
presiding over vegetation and increase. 1 We are told 

1 There are two representations of this, one at the Memnonium 
{Denkm. iii. pi. 163, 164), and another at Medinet Abu ( Denkm . iii. pi. 
212, 213). 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 189 

that the height of the corn in the fields of Aarru is 
seven cubits, and that that of the ears is two (in some 
readings, four) cubits. This blissful place is surround¬ 
ed by a wall of steel, and it is from its gate that the 
sun comes forth in the eastern sky. 

2. But the happy dead is not con- Transformation, 
fined to this locality, or to the human 
form, or to an earthly mode of existence. He has 
the range of the entire universe in every shape and 
form that he desires. This is repeatedly stated in the 
Book of the Dead, and twelve of the chapters consist 
of formulas through which certain transformations 
are operated. The forms assumed, according to these 
chapters, are the turtle-dove, the serpent Sata, 1 the 
bird called Bennu (which has generally, but, I think, 
upon insufficient grounds, been thought to have given 
rise to the story of the Phoenix), the crocodile Sebek, 
the god Ptah, a golden hawk, the chief of the prin¬ 
cipal gods, a soul, a lotus-flower and a heron. 
Brugsch has found a monument according to which 
these transformations correspond to the twelve suc- 


1 The later texts show that Sata is Horus Sam-taui, who comes out of 
the lotus-flower in the middle of the solar bark. See picture in Mariette, 
Dendera , II. pi. 48, 49. In one of the crypts of Denderahe is called 
“ the living soul of Atmu.” Elsewhere, Dendera , III. pi. 45, he is called 
“ the soul rising out of the lotus in the Maat” the morning boat of the 


sun. 


LECTURE V 


190 

cessive hours of the day. There is, however, no 
evidence as to the date at which such a correspond¬ 
ence was first imagined, or of the general recognition 
of this correspondence. And the transformations to 
which these chapters refer are far from exhausting 
the list of possible ones. No limit whatever is im¬ 
posed on the will of the departed. 

The subject has often been misunderstood through 
a confusion between Egyptian notions and either 
Pythagorean or Hindu notions. The Pythagoreans 
held the notion of the metempsychosis, and the 
legendary history of their founder represented him as 
having travelled in the East, and as having been 
initiated by Egyptian priests into their mysteries. 
The Pythagorean doctrines about the destinies of the 
human soul have, in consequence of this unauthenti¬ 
cated history, been transferred to the Egyptians, even 
by scholars who might have known better. There is 
really no connection, either doctrinally or historically, 
between the two systems. Nothing in the Pytha¬ 
gorean system is foreign to previously existing Hel¬ 
lenic modes of thought, or which requires in any 
way to be accounted for by foreign influence, and its 
metempsychosis is essentially based upon the notions 
of expiation and purification. Men were supposed to 
be punished in various forms of a renewed life upon 
earth, for sins committed in a previous state of ex- 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 191 


istence. There is not a trace of any such conception 
to be found in any Egyptian text which has yet been 
brought to light. The only transformations after 
death depend, we are expressly told, simply on the 
pleasure of the deceased or of his “ genius.” 

Nor is there any trace to be found of the notion of 
an intermediate state of purification between death and 
final bliss. Certain operations have to be performed, 
certain regions have to be traversed, certain prayers to 
be recited, but there is no indication of anything of an 
expiatorial nature. If the judgment in the Hall of 
Law is favourable, the departed comes forth triumph¬ 
antly as a god whom nothing can harm; he is identi¬ 
fied with Osiris and with every other divinity. The 
nether world, and indeed the universe at large, is full 
of terrible and hostile forces ; but through his identi¬ 
fication with the great gods and his uttering words 
of power in their name, he passes unhurt in any 

direction that he pleases. identification 

3. The identification of the departed with Osiris and 
. . . . , other gods. 

with Osins is first found explicitly as¬ 
serted on the wooden coffin (now in the British 
Museum) of king Menkaura of the third pyramid. 
The inscription, which, with different names and other 
variations, occurs on a good many coffins, is as 
follows: “ Osiris, king Men-kau-Ra, living eternally, 
born of Heaven, issue of the goddess Nut, heir of 


192 


LECTURE V. 


Seb! She stretches herself out, thy mother Nut, 
above thee in her name of Heavenly Mystery. She 
hath granted that thou shouldest become a god with¬ 
out an opponent, king Men-kau-Ra, living eternally!” 

On two royal coffins of the eleventh dynasty, the 
goddesses Isis and Nephthys are quoted as addressing 
their brother Osiris. 1 

The rituals of this early period do not actually 
insert the name of Osiris before the name of the 
departed, but all later rituals do so, except in the 
more recent periods, when women were called 
Hathor instead of Osiris. And throughout the 
Book of the Dead in the earliest forms known to us, 
the identification with Osiris or assimilation to him is 
taken for granted, and all the deities of the family of 
Osiris, or whose acts have relation to Osiris, are 
supposed to perform for the deceased whatever the 
legend records as having been done for Osiris. 

Thus in the eighteenth chapter (which, if we may 
judge from the innumerable copies of it, must have 
been considered one of the most important of all) the 
deceased is brought before a series of divinities in 
succession, the gods of Heliopolis, Abydos, Tattu 
and other localities, and at each station the litany 
begins: “O Tehuti, who causest Osiris to triumph 

1 See Birch, ‘‘ On the Formulas of Three Royal Coffins,” in the 
Zeitschr. 1869, p. 49. 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT 193 

against his opponents, cause the Osiris (such a one) 
to triumph against his opponents, even as thou hast 
made Osiris to triumph against his opponents.” He 
then repeats the names of the divinities of the place, 
generally in conjunction with some allusion to the 
legendary history of Osiris. In the next chapter, 
which is another recension of the eighteenth, and is 
entitled the “ Crown of Triumph,” the deceased is 
declared triumphant for ever and ever, and all the 
gods in heaven and earth repeat this “in presence of 
Osiris, presiding in Amenti, Unnefer, the son of Nut, 
on the day that he triumphed over Set and his asso¬ 
ciates, before the great gods of Heliopolis on the 
night of the battle in which the rebels were over¬ 
thrown, before the great gods of Abydos on the 
night wherein Osiris triumphed over his opponents, 
before the great gods of the western horizon on the 
day of the festival of £ Come thou to me.’ ” It ends : 
“ Horus has repeated this declaration four times, and 
all his enemies fall prostrate before him annihilated. 
Horus, the son of Isis, repeats it millions of times, 
and all his enemies fall annihilated. They are carried 
off to the place of execution in the East; their heads 
are cut off, their necks are broken, their thighs are 
severed, and delivered up to the great destroyer who 
dwells in Aati; they shall not come forth from the 
custody of Seb for ever.” 

9 


194 


LECTURE V. 


The term maa-yjru is always added to the name of 
the faithful departed, and used to be translated “ the 
justified.” The sense of “veridique,” truthful of 
speech, veracious, has been defended by some 
French scholars; but the real sense is “triumphant;” 
literally, “one whose word is law,” not merely 
truth. 1 

But, as I have said, it is not only to Osiris that the 
deceased is assimilated. In the forty-second chapter 
every limb is assimilated to a different deity: the hair 
to Nu, the face to Ra, the eyes to Hathor, the ears to 
Apuat, the nose to the god of Sechem, the lips to 
Anubis, the teeth to Selket, and so on, the catalogue 
ending with the words, “There is not a limb in him 
without a god, and Tehuti is a safeguard to all his 
members.” Later on, it is said, “Not men, nor gods, 
nor the ghosts of the departed, nor the damned, past, 
present or future, whoever they be, can do him hurt. 
He it is who cometh forth in safety; 'Whom men 
know not’ is his name. The ‘Yesterday which sees 
endless years’ is his name, passing in triumph by the 
roads of heaven. The deceased is the Lord of eter¬ 
nity; he is reckoned even as Chepera; he is the mas¬ 
ter of the kingly crown.” And as Osiris himself is 

1 The sense “ triumphant ” is manifest from a multitude of passages, 
and is not denied ; but it cannot be etymologically derived when madt is 
taken for Truth, and the whole compound is translated “veridique.” 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 195 


identified with many other gods, so the deceased 
person is perpetually introduced speaking of himself 
in the person of Ra, Tmu, Chnemu, Seb, Horus and 
many others. The allusions are often simple enough, 
as when it is said, “ I am Horus, and I am come to 
see my father Osiris;” or even, “I am he who resides 
in the middle of the eye;” .for in all mythologies the 
Sun is spoken of as the eye, either of heaven 1 or of 
some deity. But a god is sometimes named who is 
never mentioned elsewhere, and whose name was so 
little familiar to the copyists of the book that they 
write it in very different ways. Our ignorance here 
is of very trifling importance. 

The preliminaries to the beatification of the dead 


1 " Heaven’s eye” is a frequent expression in Shakespeare, and the 
Friar in “ Romeo and Juliet” says : 

“ Now ere the Sun advance his burning eye.” 

The following expressions of the Greek poets will be familiar to all: 

T ov TravoTrTifv kvkAov fj?uov. -Esch. Prom. 92. 

T Q xpmEdq apepar ( 3 'A edapov. Soph. Antig. 103. 

*A?uov, "A?uov alru rnvro . 

g) Kpanarevuv nar ’ on pa. Trach. 96. 

,’A 7[Xa ov yap <J r) irdoav knl xOova nai Kara ttSvtov 
aldepo^ ek Sirjg mraSepKeai ciktivegol. 

Homer, Hymn, in Dem. 69. 

From the Latin poets I will only quote Ovid’s 

Omnia qui video, per quern videt omnia tellus, 

Mundi oculus. Met. iv. 227. 



196 


LECTURE V. 


consisted in the removal of all physical or moral 
obstacles originating either in himself or in others. 
Those things of which death had deprived him are 
restored to him. His soul, his ka and his shadow 
are given back to him. There is a chapter, with a 
vignette, representing the soul uniting itself to the 
body, and the text promises that they shall never 
again be separated. The use of his mouth, hands and 
other limbs are given to him. There is a series of 
chapters relating to the restoration and protection of 
the heart, two forms of which, the ab and the had , are 
distinctly and repeatedly mentioned. The next 
eleven chapters have reference to combats which the 
deceased has to encounter with strange animals— 
crocodiles, serpents, tortoises—and to the sacred 
words in virtue of which he may confidently rely 
upon success. The chapter for repelling all reptiles 
is a short one. “ O serpent Rerek ! advance not! the 
gods Seb and Shu are my protection; stop ! thou 
who hast eaten the rat which the sun-god abhors, 
and hast chewed the bones of a rotten cat.” 

Another series of eleven chapters is intended to 
secure the Osiris against other dangers in the nether 
world, such as^ having his head cut off, dying the 
second death, suffering corruption, being turned away 
from one’s house, going to the Nemmat, an infernal 
block for the execution of the wicked, going head- 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 


197 


long in the cherti-nutar , eating or drinking filth. The 
next series of chapters in the Turin manuscript gives 
the deceased power over air and water, and some 
chapters are but different recensions of one text, the 
well-known vignette of which represents the Osiris 
receiving the water poured out to him by a hand 
coming out of a tree. The chapter begins, “ O syca¬ 
more of the goddess Nut! let there be given to me 
the water which is in thee.” 

The 149th chapter gives an account of the terrible 
nature of certain divinities and localities which the 
deceased must encounter—gigantic and venomous 
serpents, gods with names significant of death and 
destruction, waters and atmospheres of flames. But 
none of these prevail over the Osiris; he passes 
through all things without harm; unhurt he breathes 
the fiery atmosphere and drinks the waters of flame; 
and he lives in peace with the fearful gods who pre¬ 
side over these abodes. Some of these gods remind 
one of the demons in the Inferno of Dante. But 
though ministers or angels of divine justice, their 
nature is not evil. Some of the invocations con¬ 
tained in the seventeenth chapter will give some idea 
of the terrors of the Egyptian nether world. 

“O Ra, in thine egg, radiant in thy disk shining 
forth from the horizon, swimming over the steel fir¬ 
mament, sailing over the pillars of Shu, thou who 


LECTURE V. 


I98 

hast no second among the gods, who producest the 
winds by the flames of thy mouth, and who enlight- 
enest the worlds with thy splendours, save the 
departed from that god whose nature is a mystery 
and whose eyebrows are as the arms of the balance 
on the night when Aauit was weighed.” 

“ O Lord of the great dwelling, 1 supreme king of 
the gods, save the Osiris from that god who has the 
face of a hound and the eyebrows of a man, who 
feeds upon the accursed.” 

“ O Lord of victory in the two worlds, . . . save the 
Osiris from that god who seizes upon souls, devours 
hearts and feeds upon carcases.” 

“ O Scarabaeus god in thy bark, whose substance 
is kelf-originated, save the Osiris from those watchers 
to whom the Lord of spirits has entrusted the ob¬ 
servation of his enemies, and from whose observation 
none can escape. Let me not fall under their swords 
nor go to their block of execution, let me not remain 
in their abodes, let me not rest upon their beds [of 
torment], let me not fall into their nets. Let nought 
befal me which the gods abhor.” 

These trials which the departed undergo, and which 
are triumphantly overcome by the Osiris, sufficiently 

1 " The great dwelling ” is the universe, as the Hall ( use%et ) of Seb is 
the earth, the Hall of Nut is the heaven, and the Hall of the two-fold 
Maat is the nether world. 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 199 

show the fate which the wicked must expect. This 
fate is called “ the second death.” 

The faithful dead expect to be protected from the 
dangers of their new existence, partly indeed by the 
virtue of amulets and talismans to which the gods 
have given power, partly also by the knowledge of 
religious formulas (such as the chapters of the Book 
of the Dead) or of divine names, but chiefly by the 
conformity of their conduct with the standard of law 
by which they are judged by Osiris in the Amenti. 

The use of amulets was certainly 

Amulets. 

carried to the most extravagant excess, 
and the Book of the Dead even in its earliest form 
shows the importance attached to such things. In 
the thirty-second chapter, the deceased drives off the 
infernal crocodiles by pointing to the potent talismans 
upon his person. “ Back ! Crocodile of the West!” 
he says, “ who livest upon the Achemu who are at 
rest; what thou abhorrest is upon me; I have eaten 
the head of Osiris; I am Set. Back ! Crocodile of 
the West! there is an asp upon me; I shall not be 
given to thee ; dart not thy flame upon me. Back! 
Crocodile of the East! who feedest upon impurities; 
what thou abhorrest is upon me; I have passed; I 
am Osirisand so on. Directions are given in the 
rubrics of certain characters for the construction of 
these talismans, such as the Tat of gold (ch. 155), 


200 


LECTURE V 


emblematic of the vertebrae of Osiris; the buckle of 
red quartz (ch. 156), which the text connects with the 
blood of Isis and the magic words of Osiris; and the 
golden vulture (ch. 157), which has reference to some 
parts of the history of Isis and Horus. The most 
important probably of these talismans was the scara- 
baeus which had the thirtieth chapter inscribed upon 
it. The rubric directs it to be placed upon the heart 
of the deceased person. An immense number of 
these scarabaei have been found with the chapter in¬ 
scribed upon them ; there is probably no chapter of 
which the text can be restored with greater difficulty. 
Its antiquity is extreme, and the different readings 
already abounded at the time of the eleventh dynasty. 

The belief in the magic power of 

Words of Power. . , , ,, ... r 

sacred words, whether religious for¬ 
mulas or the names of gods, was also acknowledged 
and was the source of a frightful amount of supersti¬ 
tion. The rubric at the end of the first chapter is a 
specimen of what occurs in others. “ If this chapter 
be known upon earth or if it be written upon his 
coffin, he will come forth every day that he pleases, 
and enter his house without being prevented; there 
shall be given to him bread and beer, and flesh upon 
the tables of Ra ; he will work in the fields of Aarru, 
and there shall be given to him the wheat and barley 
which are there, for he shall flourish as though he 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 201 


were upon earth.” Another rubric says : “ If this 

chapter be recited over him, he will go forth over the 
earth, and he will pass through every kind of fire, no 
evil thing being able to hurt him.” 

The power of the book of Tehuti (that is, of the 
Book of the Dead), it is said in one place, is the 
cause of the triumph of Osiris over his ghostly ene¬ 
mies. And in very many places the Osiris bases his 
claims on the simple fact of knowing the names of 
the gods whom he addresses, or of the localities in 
the divine world which he inhabits. 

The superstitious repetition of names (many of 
which perhaps never had any meaning at all) is parti¬ 
cularly conspicuous in numerous documents much 
more recent than the Book of the Dead; from the 
time, in fact, of the eighteenth dynasty down to Chris¬ 
tian times. But the last chapters of the Turin copy of 
the Book of the Dead, which, though really no por¬ 
tion of it, are probably very ancient, already indulge 
in this gross superstition. “ Iruka is thy name, 
Markata is thy name, Ruta is thy name, Nasakaba is 
thy name, Tanasa-tanasa is thy name, Sharusatakata 
is thy name.” 

From rubbish like this, which is Moral Doctrine . 
only worthy of the spells of vulgar 
conjurors, it is pleasant to pass to the moral doctrines 
of the Book of the Dead, which are the same which 
9* 


202 


LECTURE V. 


were recognized in the earliest times. No one could 
pass to the blissful dwellings of the dead who had 
failed at the judgment passed in presence of Osiris. 
No portion of the Book of the Dead is so generally 
known as the picture which represents the deceased 
person standing in the presence of the goddess Maat, 
who is distinguished by the ostrich-feather upon her 
head; she holds a sceptre in one hand and the sym¬ 
bol of life 1 in the other. The man’s heart, which 
represents his entire moral nature, is being weighed 
in the balance in presence of Osiris, seated upon his 
throne as judge of the dead. The second scale con¬ 
tains the image of Maat. Horus is watching the in¬ 
dicator of the balance, and Tehuti, the god of letters, 
is writing down the result. Forty-two divinities are 
represented in a line above the balance. These gods 
correspond to the same number of sins which it is 
their office to punish. It is with reference to these 
sins and the virtues to which they are opposed that 
the examination of the deceased chiefly consists. 

The hundred and twenty-fifth chapter is entitled 
“ Book of entering into the Hall of the Two-fold 
Maat : 2 the person parts from his sins that he may 

1 Let me protest in this place against the stupid and utterly unfounded 
identification of this symbol of life with phallic emblems. When the 
Egyptians meant to represent anything phallic, they did so in such a way 
as to leave no doubt as to their meaning. 

3 Maat is here and elsewhere put in the dual. The reason of this is 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 207 , 


see the divine faces.” The deceased begins : “ Hail 
to you, ye lords of the Two-fold Maat, and hail to 
thee, great god, lord of the Two-fold Maat! I have 
come to thee, my lord, I have brought myself to see 
thy glories. ... I know thy name, and I know the 
names of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in 
the Hall of the Two-fold Maat, who live by the 
punishment of the wicked, and devour their blood 
on that day of weighing the words in presence of 
Unnefer, the triumphant.” A good deal which 
follows in the Turin copy is not contained in all the 
manuscripts. But the following extracts deserve 
mention. “ I have brought you Law , 1 and subdued 
for you iniquity. I am not a doer of fraud and 
iniquity against men. I am not a doer of that which 
is crooked in place of that which is right. I am not 
cognizant of iniquity; I am not a doer of evil. I do 
not force a labouring man to do more than his daily 
task. ... I do not calumniate a servant to his 
master; I do not cause hunger; I do not cause 

not quite clear. The word used to be translated “ the two Truths; ac¬ 
cording to M. de Rouge, ‘‘la double Justice.” Dr. Ludwig Stern 
argues from the analogy of other Eastern expressions that the dual form 
here signifies “ Right and Wrong.” I rather adhere to M. Grebaut’s 
view, that the realm of Maat, being traversed by the sun, is thereby 
divided, like heaven and earth, into two parts. 

i The kings of Egypt are constantly represented with the image or 
emblem of Maat in their hands as a religious offering. 


204 


LECTURE V. 


weeping; I am not a murderer; I do not give order 
to murder privily; I am not guilty of fraud against 
any one; I am not a falsifier of the measures in the 
temples. ... I do not add to the weight of the 
scale; I do not falsify the indicator of the balance; 
I do not withhold milk from the mouth of the 
suckling.” The catalogue of the forty-two sins, 
each of which has an avenging deity, includes some 
of those I have quoted and omits others. The sins 
are not catalogued according to any scientific ar¬ 
rangement. Besides the crimes of violence and 
theft, different sins against chastity are mentioned; 
not only evil-speaking and lying, but exaggeration, 
chattering and idle words are condemned; he who 
reviles the king, his father or his god, the evil 
listener and he who turns a deaf ear to the words 
of truth or justice, he who causes pain of mind to 
another, or who in his heart thinks meanly of God— 
all these fail to satisfy the conditions of admission 
into the ranks of the triumphant dead. 

The 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead cer¬ 
tainly contains the oldest known code of private and 
public morality. The fifteenth chapter, which is a 
hymn to the rising and to the setting Sun, is the 
most ancient piece of poetry in the literature of the 
world. 1 The seventeenth chapter is not less remark- 

1 M. Lefebure lias published a critical edition, with a translation and 
commentary. 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 205 

able. It consists, as Bunsen says, 1 “of short and 
obscure ejaculations, and of glosses and commen¬ 
taries upon this text; ” “ of an original sacred hymn, 
interspersed with such glosses or scholia as must 
have been collected by a vast number of interpreters.' 
This is identical with saying that the record was at 
that time no longer intelligible. Yet the text of the 
whole chapter is written, not only in the Turin 
papyrus, but on the coffin of the eleventh dynasty. 
Add to this that the text thus confounded in every 
verse with its glosses is written so confusedly, both 
on the coffin and in the papyrus, that the scholia are 

jumbled into wrong spaces.Suppose a psalm 

of the Hebrew text to have been copied on a royal 
monument with a whole catena of commentaries and 
glossaries, but copied 2ino tenore , without distinction 
of text and notes. Such exactly is the state of 
the Egyptian record.” Since Bunsen wrote, consider¬ 
able light has been thrown upon the chapter. M. 
de Rouge has translated the chapter, after having 
carefully collated all the manuscripts accessible to 
him, and has learnedly commented upon both the 
original texts and the glosses. 2 Lepsius has greatly 
added to our knowledge by publishing two texts of 
the chapter copied from coffins of the ancient empire, 

1 “ Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Vol. V. pp. 89, 90. 

* <( Etudes sur la Rituel Funeraire des anciens Egyptiens,” 1S60. 



206 


LECTURE V. 


with his learned annotations . 1 The whole of the 
chapter is important, but the most interesting portion 
is the beginning of it, which may be thus translated: 
“ I am Tmu, who have made heaven, and have 
created all the things which are; and I exist alone, 
rising out of Nu. I am Ra with his diadem, when he 
began the kingdom which he made.” The gloss asks, 
“ What is this ? ” and the answer is, that “ Ra began 
to exercise his sovereignty when as yet there was no 
firmament, and when he was on the height of Am- 
chemun, for then he established the children of inert¬ 
ness 2 upon the height of Am-chemun.” The mean¬ 
ing of this is, that there was a time of chaos when no 
distinction as yet existed between earth and sky. But 
the kingdom of Ra was already established, and in his 
reign the firmament was raised, and certain person¬ 
ages, called the children of inertness, were established 
(as gods, according to one reading) on the height of 
Am-chemun, where Ra himself had resided before. 
Chemun is the Egyptian name of Hermopolis, but it 

1 “ Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs,” 1867. 

2 “ Fils de la revolte,” according to M. de Roug 4 . There are two 
words which are sometimes confounded, even in Egyptian texts, beshet 
and betesh. They may he etymologically connected by metathesis (the 
first is even sometimes written shebet ), for both mean “ stretch outthe 
former, however, in active opposition, the second in helplessness. Betesh 
has some of the meanings of the Hebrew rOT, cessavit, desiit; hence 
desidia, interpellate operis. 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 20 J 


also signifies the number Eight. The “ children of 
inertness ” ate the elementary forces of nature, which 
according to Egyptian ideas were eight in number. 
These elements, born out of chaos or inertness, 
henceforth became active, and were made to rule the 
world under Ra as the demiurgus 1 

“The text proceeds—“ I am the great God, self- 
existent ; ” but a longer recension adds, “ that is to 
say the Water, that is to say Nu, the father of the 
gods.” According to a gloss, the self-existent god 
is Ra Nu, the father of the gods, and other glosses 
speak of Ra as “ creating his name as Lord of all the 
gods, or as producing his limbs, which become the 
gods who are in his company.” Besides this cosmo- 
logy, the chapter contains a number of interesting 
details on the mythology and on the symbolism 
which is connected with it; as, for instance, that the 
ithyphallic god Amesi is Horus, the avenger of his 
father, and that the two feathers upon his head are 
the twin sisters Isis and Nephthys. 2 

The sixty-fourth chapter is scarcely less interest¬ 
ing; but in spite of the excellent labours of M. 
Guyesse, who has carefully edited and translated 
several recensions of it, much remains to be done 
before it can be made thoroughly intelligible, not 

1 See the excellent article of M. Naville in the Zeitschrift, 1874, P* 5 7* 

a There are other glosses at variance with this interpretation. 


208 


LECTURE V 


only to the public at large, but to professional schol¬ 
ars. Tradition, as represented by the rubrics of the 
chapter, assigned the discovery of this document 
either to the time of king Menkaura, according to 
some manuscripts, or to that of king Septi of the first 
dynasty. The chapter is twice copied on the sarco¬ 
phagus of the queen of the eleventh dynasty, and in 
one of the copies king Septi’s name is given; the 
other copy follows the tradition in favour of king 
Menkaura, though the scribe has blundered about the 
name, and inserted that of Mentuhotep, which is the 
royal name to which the coffin itself belongs. The 
130th chapter is also said to have been found in the 
palace of king Septi. It is very doubtful whether 
these traditions rest upon any authentic basis. 

Other Sacred As Book of the Dead is the most 
Books - ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most 

important of the sacred books of the Egyptians. 
Other works are interesting to the archaeologist, and 
require to be studied by those who desire to have 
minute and accurate knowledge of the entire mytho¬ 
logy, but they are extremely wearisome and repulsive 
to all whose aim extends beyond mere erudition. I 
am not now referring to hymns and other private 
compositions (found in papyri or on the walls of 
tombs and temples) some of which I shall have occa¬ 
sion to speak of in the next Lecture, but to the books 


THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 209 

which were evidently recognized as having public 
and, if I may say so, canonical’authority. Those who 
are best known have reference to the passage of the 
sun through the twelve hours of the night. That 
part of the world which is below the earth and 
visited by the sun after his setting, is called the Tuat. 
The bark of the sun is represented as proceeding 
over a river called the Uranes, through fields culti¬ 
vated by the departed. The whole space is divided 
into twelve parts, separated by gates. The “ Book of 
that which is in the Tuat” contains a short descrip¬ 
tion of these twelve divisions, their names, the names 
of the hours of the night, of the gates and of the gods 
belonging to each locality, and it states the advan¬ 
tages to be derived from a knowledge of these names, 
and also from the due observance upon earth by the 
living of the rites due to the departed. It is said, for 
instance, that if these rites are conducted em ser 
maat , “ with the strict accuracy of Law,” the honors 
paid to him on earth are transmitted to him in the 
lower world. If he knows the names of the gods he 
encounters, no harm will come to him. The papyri 
which contain this composition are always illustrated; 
the text is indeed in great part simply descriptive of 
the picture to which it refers. 

Very similar in its nature is the composition which 
covers the beautiful alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., 


210 


LECTURE V. 


now in the Soane Museum. Other copies of it are 
known to us. Perhaps the most interesting part of 
this text is the scene which recognizes men of for¬ 
eign and hostile races, the Tamehu, the Aamu, and 
the Negroes, men of the Red land ( Tesheret ) as well 
as those of the Black land ( Kamit , Egypt), as created 
and protected by the gods of Egypt. M. Lefebure 
has translated this text, and part of his transla¬ 
tion has already appeared in the “Records of the 
Past.” 1 

1 See also his paper on “ Les quatre races au Jugement Dernier,” in 
the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Litera¬ 
ture. 


LECTURE VI. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS: HENOTHEISM, 
PANTHEISM AND MATERIALISM. 


Lamentations of The Lamentations of Isis and Nep h- 
Isis and Neph- 

thys. thys are a poetical composition sup¬ 

posed to be recited by the two sisters of Osiris for the 
purpose of effecting his resurrection, but intended to 
be repeated by two priestly personages over the dead. 
It has been completely translated for the first time by 
M. de Horrack. The first section begins with the 
cries of Isis: 

" Come to thine abode, come to thine abode ! God 
An, come to thine abode! Thine enemies are no 
more. O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode! 
Look at me: I am thy sister who loveth thee. Do 
not remain far from me, O beautiful youth! Come 
to thine abode, quickly! quickly! I see thee no 
more. My heart is full of sorrow because of thee. 

Mine eyes seek after thee. I seek to behold thee: 

2 11 




212 


LECTURE VI. 


will it be long ere I see thee ? will it be long ere I see 
thee ? Beholding thee is happiness (bis) ; O god An, 
beholding thee is happiness. O Unnefer the trium¬ 
phant, come to thy sister, come to thy wife (bis). O 
thou whose heart is motionless, come to thy spouse. 
I am thy sister by thy mother; do not separate from 
me. Gods and men turn their faces towards thee, 
weeping together for thee, whenever they behold 
me. I call thee in my lamentations even to the 
heights of heaven, and thou hearest not my voice. I 
am thy sister who loveth thee upon earth; no one 
else hath loved thee more than I, thy sister, thy 
sister!” 

Then Nephthys takes up the strain: 

“ O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode! 
Rejoice; all thine enemies are annihilated. Thy two 
sisters are near thee, protecting thy funeral bed: 
calling thee in weeping, thee who art prostrate on 
thy funeral bed. Speak to us, supreme Ruler, 
our Lord. Chase all the anguish which is in our 
hearts,” &c. 

In the invocations of which this book chiefly con¬ 
sists, protection is said to be afforded to the body 
of Osiris, that is, of the deceased person, by various 
gods in succession : by Isis, Nephthys, Tehuti, Neith, 
the divine mother of Osiris, and the children of 
Horus. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


213 


The last invocation is as follows : “ Come and 

behold thy son Horus as supreme ruler of gods and 
men. He hath taken possession of the cities and the 
districts by the greatness of the respect he inspires. 
Heaven and earth are in awe of him; the barbarians 
are in fear of him. Thy companions who are gods 
and men have become his. . . . Thy two sisters are 
near to thee, offering libations to thy ka; thy son 
Horus accomplished for thee the funeral offering of 
bread, of beverages, of oxen and of geese. Tehuti 
chanteth thy festival songs, invoking thee by his 
beneficial formulae. The children of Horus are the 
protection of thy members, benefiting thy soul each 
day. Thy son Horus saluteth thy name in thy mys¬ 
terious abode; the gods hold vases in their hands to 
make libations to thee. Come to thy companions, 
supreme Ruler, our Lord! Do not separate thyself 
from them.” 

The -rubric prescribes that whilst this is recited, 
two beautiful women are to sit upon the ground, 
with the names Isis and Nephthys inscribed upon 
their shoulders. Crystal vases of water are to be 
placed in their right hands, and loaves of bread made 
in Memphis in their left hands. 

Very similar to these Lamentations Book of giorify- 
is the “ Book of glorifying Osiris in S 
Aqerti,” contained in a papyrus of the Louvre, 


214 


LECTURE VI. 


which has been published and translated by M. 
Pierret. It is also supposed to be recited by Isis 
and Nephthys, and it begins : 

“ Come to thine abode, O come to thine abode 
god An, come to thine abode; good bull, the Lord 
of all men who love thee and all women; god of the 
beautiful countenance, who residest in Aqerti. An¬ 
cient one among those of the sacred West. Are not 
all hearts swelling with love of thee, O Unnefer! . . 

. . Gods and men raise their hands in search of thee, 
as a son seeketh his mother. Come to them whose 
hearts are sick, grant to them to come forth in glad¬ 
ness, that the bands of Horus may exult, and the 
abodes of Set may fall in fear of thee. Ho ! Osiris 
who dwellest among those in Amenti; I am thy sis¬ 
ter Isis; neither god nor goddess hath done what I 
have done for thee. I am who was a female have 
done a man’s part to give life to thy name upon 
earth. Thy potent seed within my womb I have set 
down upon the earth to avenge thee. .... Set yields 
to his wounds, the partizans of Set rejoin him, but 
the throne of Seb is for thee who art his beloved 
son.” The book continues to speak of the war ener¬ 
getically conducted with the aid of Nephthys and 
Horus against all the enemies of Osiris. The de¬ 
parted, considered as Osiris, is directly identified 
with the first cause of all things. 



RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 21 5 

“ O Osiris .... thou art the Youth at the horizon 
of heaven daily, and thine old age is the beginning of 
all seasons. The Nile cometh at the bidding of thy 
mouth, giving life to men by the emanations which 
proceed from thy limbs, who by thy coming causest 

all plants to grow up.O Osiris, thou art the 

Lord of millions, raising up all wild animals and all 
cattle; the creation of all that is proceedeth from 
thee. To thee belongeth all that is upon earth; to 
thee all that is in heaven; to thee all that is in the 
waters; to thee belongeth all that is in life or in 
death; to thee all that is male or female. Thou art 
the sovereign king of the gods, the prince amid the 
company of the gods.” 

The text concludes with enumerating a multitude 
of localities in which Osiris is adored, and is more 
interesting from a geographical than from a religious 
point of view. In this composition (the manuscript 
of which belongs to the time of the twenty-sixth 
dynasty) the only passages which imply any ethical 
sympathy are these: “Thou art the lord of Maat 
(here signifying Righteousness), hating iniquity. . . . 
The goddess Maat is with thee, and the whole day 
she never withdraweth herself from thee. Iniquity 
approacheth thee not wherever thou art.” 

In the later periods, instead of the Bookofthe 
Book of the Dead, another work, more Breaths of life. 



21 6 


LECTURE VI. 


systematically composed and partly abridged from it, 
was buried with the dead and placed under the left 
arm near the heart. This book was called the Shaft 
en sensen , “Book of the Breaths of Life, made by 
Isis for her brother Osiris, for giving new life to his 
soul and body, and renewing all his limbs, that he 
may reach the horizon with his father the Sun, that 
his soul may rise to heaven in the disk of the Moon, 
that his body may shine in the stars of the constella¬ 
tion Orion, on the bosom of Nut.” It might be called 
a Breviary of the Book of the Dead, all the ideas in 
it being borrowed from that older collection, but the 
obscurities both in form and in matter are studiously 
avoided. 

It was first published in the plates to the Travels 
of Vivant-Denon; then Brugsch, in an early publica¬ 
tion of his, translated it into Latin, calling it the 
Book of the Metempsychosis of the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians ; and finally, a critical edition has been given of 
it, with a French translation by M. de Horrack. 

Of the many other compendiums, paraphrases and 
imitations of the Book of the Dead, I shall only men¬ 
tion one, and that for the sake of a sort of definition 
which it gives of the gods. The English language is 
less suited than Greek or German for the translation 
of cheper chenti chep ch&t neb eni-chet cheper-sen , which 
is literally, “the Becoming which is in the Becoming 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


217 


of all things when they become/’ Under this play of 
words the writer wishes to describe “the cause of 
change in everything that changes,” and he adds: 
“the mighty ones, the powerful ones, the beneficent, 
the nutriu , who test by their level the words of men, 
the Lords of Law (Maat), Hail to you, ye gods, 
ye associate gods, who are without body , who rule 
that which is born from the earth and that which 
is produced in the house of your cradles [in hea¬ 
ven].Ye prototypes of the image of all that 

exists, ye fathers and mothers of the solar orb, ye 
forms, ye great ones (uru), ye mighty ones (aaiu), ye 
strong ones (nutria), first company of the gods of 
Almu, who generated men and shaped the form of 
every form, ye lords of all things: hail to you, ye 
lords of eternity and everlasting.” 

The author of this composition, the text of which 
has only been published quite recently , 1 and was 
quite unknown to me when I delivered my third 
Lecture, has evidently the same conception of the 
gods of Egypt as that which I inferred from the 
scattered utterances we come across in the course of 
the national literature. The gods of Egypt are the 

1 Wiedemann, Hieratische Texte aus den Museen zu Berlin und 
Paris; Leipzig, 1879, Taf. 1. This text is from the Louvre papyrus 
3283, of which a notice is found in Deveria’s “ Catalogue des Manu- 
scrits Egyptiens,” p. 143. 

IO 



2 I 8 


LECTURE VI. 


“ mighty ones,” the forces acting throughout the 
universe, in heaven and on earth, according to fixed 
and unchangeable law, for ever and ever. 

A still more recent book is one 
Rhmd Papyri. was discovered by Mr. Rhind 

at Thebes. The papyri are of the Roman period, 
and they are bilingual. The upper portion of 
each page is in the ancient language, written in 
hieratic characters; the lower contains a translation 
into the vernacular of Egypt in the time of Au¬ 
gustus, . and this is written in demotic characters 
The form of this work is quite unlike that of the 
Book of the Dead, but the ideas remain unchanged. 
The same view of the world beyond the grave, and 
of the gods who influence the destiny of the de¬ 
parted, prevails to the last. The actual deification 
of the departed is not perpetually dwelt upon, but it 
is distinctly recognized. “ Thou art the eldest 
brother among the five gods to whom thou art 
going ” (Osiris is called in the Book of the Dead the 
eldest of the five gods of the family of Seb). “ O 
thou august child of the gods and goddesses, O thou 
king of the gods and men, who art king of the 
Tuat,” that is, of the nether world. And there is 
the same disregard of consistency as in the older 
times, for the departed is spoken of, almost in the. 
same sentence, as one of those who are in the service 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


219 


of Osiris, whom he addresses, “ 0 my lord and father 
Osiris! ” 

One of the chief differences between Magical liter*. 

ture.i 

the earlier and the most recent formu¬ 
laries is, that the latter are simply said over the 
deceased, instead of being intended to be said by him. 
Hence the absence of the personification of the gods 
by the dead, and the utterance in their names of 
words of power. This assimilation to divinity, which 
appears to be the most potent means of overcoming 
all dangers and disasters after death, was equally 
resorted to for the purpose of triumphing over all the 
dangers and the disasters of the present life. The 
metaphysical axiom, that every effect has its cause, 
the Egyptians conceived in another way; namely, 


1 The authorities to be consulted on this subject are: 

Chabas, “ Papyrus Magique Harris." * 

Birch, “ Egyptian Magical Text,” in “ Records of the Past,” Vol. VI. 
p. 113. 

Pleyte, “Etudes £gyptologiques,” and “ Papyrus de Turin.” 

Ebers, “ Papyros Ebers, das Hermetische Buch iiber die Arzneimittel 
der alten Aegypten.” 

Goodwin “ Graeco-Egyptian Fragment on Magic,” in the Publications 
of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. 

A good many extracts from magical works will be found in Brugsch’s 
"Grammaire Demotique,” and some entire compositions are translated 
by M. Maspero in his “ Etudes Demotiques,” published in the Recuei't 
de travaux relatifs a la philologie et a Varcheologie egyptiennes et assy- 


rtennes. 


220 


LECTURE VI. 


that everything that happened was owing to the 
action of some divinity. They believed therefore in 
the incessant intervention of the gods; and their 
magical literature is based on the notion of frighten¬ 
ing one god by the terrors of a more powerful divi¬ 
nity, either by prayer placing a person under the 
protection of this divinity, or by the person actually 
assuming its name and authority. Disease and pain 
being caused by the intervention of some god, the 
efficacy of the medicines which are taken is owing 
chiefly to the prayers or incantations which are said 
over them. Isis is the great enchantress, and she 
delivers the sick and suffering from the gods and 
goddesses who afflict them, even as she delivered her 
son Horus from his wounds received in his battle 
with Set. The sun-god Ra had himself been ill, and 
the gods Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut and Isis, had prepared 
medicine for him. Even when no medicines are 
taken, palm-sprigs may serve as a charm, if a formula 
be pronounced relative to the palm-branch with 
which Horus defended himself against Set, and if Isis, 
the mother of Horus, be invoked. But sometimes 
the speaker boldly says, “ I am Anubis, the son of 
Nephthys; I am Anubis, the son of Ra; I am Horus, 
I am Amon, I am Mentu, I am Set.” Sometimes 
threats are uttered. The person using the spell relies 
upon his knowledge, and consequently on his power 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


221 


of revealing mysterious secrets. “ N., son of N., is 
the messenger of Ra. ... He is the messenger of 
every god and every goddess, and he utters the pro¬ 
clamation of Tehuti. N., son of N., knows the 
mysterious chest which is in Heliopolis, and all the 
hidden things of Heliopolis.” “ If he who is in the 
waters opens his mouth, , . . I will cause the earth 
to fall into the sea, the south to be changed into the 
north, and the whole world to be overturned.” 
There is a terrible spell in behalf of a lady in child¬ 
birth. The lady is first identified with Isis, and the 
gods are invoked to prepare a place for her delivery. 
They are told that, in case of their not doing so, 
“You shall be undone, you cycle of the gods; there 
shall no longer be any earth; there shall no longer 
be the five supplementary days of the year; there 
shall be no more any offerings to the gods, lords of 
Heliopolis. There shall be a sinking of the southern 
sky, and disasters shall come from the sky of the 
north ; there shall be cries from the tomb; the mid¬ 
day sun shall no longer shine; the Nile shall not 
furnish its waters at its wonted time. It is not I who 
say this ; it is not I who repeat it; it is Isis who 
speaketh ; she it is who repeateth it.” 

The very same kind of threats are spoken of by 
Porphyiy, about 270 A. d., as mentioned by Chaere- 
mon, a sacerdotal scribe in the first century, and 


222 


LECTURE VI. 


affirmed by him to be of potent efficacy. “ What a 
height of madness,” says Porphyry, “does it not 
imply in the man who thus threatens what he neither 
understands nor is able to perform, and what base¬ 
ness does it not attribute to the beings who are sup¬ 
posed to be frightened by these vain bugbears and 
figments, like silly children!” An Egyptian priest 
of the name of Abammon is introduced in the work 
of Jamblichos as replying to the objections of Por¬ 
phyry. He distinguishes between the gods, proper¬ 
ly speaking, and the dacjuovs c, who are subordinate 
ministers, and he says that it is to the latter alone 
that threats are used. And the authority of the the- 
urgist he derives from identification with the divinity. 
But the days of the Egyptian religion were already 
numbered when the book of Jamblichos was written. 
Constantine was reigning, and the gods of Egypt 
were already being deserted by their worshippers, 
who transferred their devotion to Christianity in one 
of its austerest forms. A very few years after the 
work of Jamblichos was written, the emperor Valens 
issued an edict against the monks of Egypt, and a de¬ 
tachment of cavalry and infantry, consisting of three 
thousand men, was sent into the desert of Nitria 
to compel the able-bodied ascetics who had retired 
thither to enlist in the imperial armies. In the next 
generation, Gibbon tells us, “ The stately and popu- 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


223 


lous city of Oxyrinchus, the seat of Christian ortho¬ 
doxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices 
and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; 
and the bishop who might preach in twelve churches 
computed 10,000 females and 20,000 males of the 
monastic profession. The Egyptians, who gloried in 
this marvellous revolution, were disposed to hope 
and to believe that the number of monks was equal 
to the remainder of the people.” 

We have unfortunately no history of the gradual 
conversion of the Egyptians to Christianity. But 
when we compare the notions of the Divinity as con¬ 
tained in the authorized books of Egyptian theology 
with those which we ourselves hold, we cannot but 
ask whether so intelligent a people never came near¬ 
er to the truth than their most recent books would 
appear to show. What, then, do we mean by God ? 
I will not venture to use my own words, but will use 
those of one of the greatest masters of the English 
language. 

“ I mean, then, by the Supreme Be- True notion of 
ing, one who is simply self-dependent, God * 
and the only Being who is such; moreover, that he 
is without beginning, or eternal; that in consequence 
he has lived a whole eternity by himself; and hence 
that he is all-sufficient, sufficient for his own blessed¬ 
ness, and all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I 


224 


LECTURE VI. 


mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the 
supreme Good, or rather is the supreme Good, or has 
all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness; all 
wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all 
beautifulness; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omni¬ 
present ; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such 
that we do not know, and cannot even imagine of 
him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. 
I mean, moreover, that he created all things out of 
nothing, and preserves them every moment, and 
could destroy them as easily as he made them; and 
that in consequence he is separated from them by an 
abyss, and is incommunicable in all his attributes. 
And further, he has stamped upon all things, in the 
hour of their creation, their respective nature, and has 
given them their work and mission, and their length 
of days, greater or less, in their appointed place. I 
mean, too, that he is ever present with his works, one 
by one, and confronts everything he has made by his 
particular and most loving Providence, and manifests 
himself to each according to its needs; and has on 
rational beings imprinted the moral law, and given 
them power to obey it, imposing on them the duty of 
worship and service, searching and scanning them 
through and through with his omniscient eye, and 
putting before them a present trial and a judgment to 


come. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 225 

Now as I carefully examine each paragraph of this 
beautiful passage (in which many will at once recog¬ 
nize the language of John Henry Newman), 1 I am 
obliged to acknowledge that single parallel passages 
to match can be quoted from Egyptian far more 
easily than either from Greek or from Roman reli¬ 
gious literature. I am not speaking of philosophy, 
which both in Greece and Rome was generally sub¬ 
versive of the popular religion. Where shall we find 
a heathen Greek or Latin saying like that of a papy¬ 
rus on the staircase of the British Museum: “The 
great God, Lord of heaven and of earth, who made 
all things which are ” ? Or where shall we find such a 
prayer in heathen Greek or Roman times as this: O 
my God and Lord, who hast made me, and formed 
me, give me an eye to see and an ear to hear thy 
glories”? On the other hand, passages like these 
are constantly accompanied by others in which the 
old polytheistic language is used without hesitation. 
Some phrases, again, are ambiguous, and if their true 
sense be a good one, the popular interpretation may 
be a bad one. No words can more distinctly express 
the notion of “self-existent Being” than chepera che- 
per t’esef words which very frequently occur in 
Egyptian religious texts. But the word chepera sig¬ 
nifies scarabaeus as well as being , and the scarabaeus 

1 “ Idea of a University,” p. 60 and following. 


22 6 


LECTURE VI. 


was in fact an object of worship, as a symbol of divi¬ 
nity. How many Egyptians accepted the words in a 
sense which we ourselves should admit to be correct? 
Was there really, as is frequently asserted, an esoteric 
doctrine known to the scribes and priests alone, as 
distinct from the popular belief? No evidence has 
yet been produced in favour of this hypothesis. 

The nature of Henotheism as distinct 
from Monotheism was explained in last 
year’s Lectures as a phase of religious thought in 
which the individual gods invoked are not conceived 
as limited by the power of others. “ Each god is to 
the mind of the suppliant as good as all the gods. He 
is felt at the time as a real divinity, as supreme and 
absolute, in spite of the necessary limitations which 
to our mind a plurality of gods must entail on every 
single god. All the rest disappear from the vision, 
.... and he only who is to fulfil their desires stands 
in full light before the eyes of the worshippers.” 1 

This phase of religious thought is chiefly presented 
to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with the 
earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty.. It is cer¬ 
tainly much more ancient, but the literature, properly 
speaking, of the older period is very small. None of 
the hymns of that time have come down to us. 

1 Max Muller, “Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as 
illustrated by the Religions of India,” p. 285. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


One of the most interesting hymns to Osiris is en¬ 
graved on a funereal tablet now in the Bibliotheque 
Nationale in Paris, and was published and translated 
in 1857 by M. Chabas. The ancient date of it is 
marked by the hammering out of it of the name 
Amon, during the period of the sun-disk worshippers. 
It probably belongs to the time of Tehutimes III. 

Osiris is called “ Lord of eternity, king of the gods, 
of many names, of holy transformations, of mysterious 

forms in the temples.He is'the substance of 

the world, Atmu, feeder of beings among the gods, 
beneficent spirit in the abode of spirits. From him 
the (celestial ocean) Nu derives its waters, from him 
comes the wind, and respirable air is in his nostrils 
for his satisfaction and the taste of his heart. For 
him the ground brings forth its abundance; in obedi¬ 
ence to him is the upper heaven and its stars, and he 
opens the great gates. He is the master of invoca¬ 
tions in the southern heavens, and of adorations in 
the northern heavens; the ever-moving stars are 
under obedience to him, and so are the stars which 

set.He is the excellent master of the gods, 

fair and beloved by all who see him.He is the 

eldest, the first of his brothers, the chief of the gods; 
he it is who maintains law in the universe, and places 

the son in the seat of his father.He has made 

this world with his hands; its waters, its atmosphere, 





228 


LECTURE VI. 


its vegetation, all its flocks, all its flying things, all its 
fish, all its reptiles and quadrupeds. . . . His diadem 
predominates at the zenith of heaven and accompanies 
the stars ; he is the guide of all the gods. He is 
beneficent in will and words; he is the praise of the 
great gods, and the love of the inferior gods.” 

What follows is textually applied to Horus, but it 
is to Horus considered as Osiris born again, and as 
the son of the widowed Isis. 

u The gods recognize the universal Lord. . . . He 
takes the royalty of the double world; the crown of 
the south is fixed upon his head. He judges the 
world according to his will; heaven and earth are in 
subjection to him; he giveth his commands to men, 
to the generations present, past and future, to 
Egyptians and to strangers. The circuit of the 
solar orb is under his direction; the winds, the 
waters, the wood of the plants and all vegetables. 
A god of seeds, he giveth all herbs and the abun¬ 
dance of the soil. He aflordeth plentifulness, and 
giveth it to all the earth. All men are in ecstasy, all 
hearts in sweetness, all bosoms in joy, every one in 
adoration. Every one glorifieth his goodness; his 
tenderness encircles our hearts; great is his love in 
all bosoms.” 1 

1 The “ Records of the Past,” give the translation of this hymn, and of 
some of the others which are here quoted. I have in these Lectures 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 22g 

An ancient text now in the British Museum is in 
so mutilated a condition that it is in many places 
quite illegible^ There is one passage in it which 
refers either to Tehuti or to Ptah. Of this god it is 
said that “ he gave birth to the gods, he made towns 
and organized provinces. . . . All things proceed 
from him. The divine word is made for those who 
love and for those who hate it; it gives life to the 
righteous, and it gives death to the unjust. To him 
is due the work of the hands, the walking of the feet, 
the sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, the 
breathing of the nostrils, the fortitude of heart, the 
vigour of hand, activity in body and in mouth of all 
the gods and men and of all living animals, intelli¬ 
gence and speech; whatever is in the heart and 
whatever is on the tongue.” 

“ Hail to thee, Tehuti,” says the tablet of Hor-em- 
heb in the British Museum, “ Lord of Hermopolis, 
self-existent, without birth, sole God, who regulatest 
the nether world and givest laws to those who are 
in the Amenti, and to those who are in the service 
of Ra.” 

“ Hail to thee,” we read in another hymn, “ Ra- 
Tmu-Horus of the double horizon, the one God, 


availed myself freely of the existing translations, but have not scrupled 
to introduce important alterations, for which no one but myself is re¬ 
sponsible. 


230 


LECTURE VI. 


living by Maat, who makest all things which are, 
who createst all that exists of beasts and men pro¬ 
ceeding from thine eyes. Lord of heaven, Lord of 
earth, who makest those who are below and those 

who are above, Lord of all.King of heaven, 

Lord of all gods. O supreme King, amid the society 
of the gods, almighty God, self-existent, two-fold sub¬ 
stance, existing from the beginning.” 

In a papyrus at Turin, the following words are put 
into the mouth of “ the almighty God, the self-ex¬ 
istent, who made heaven and earth, the waters, the 
breaths of life, fire, the gods, men, animals, cattle, 
reptiles, birds, fishes, kings, men and gods” [in 

accordance with one single thought]. “Iam the 

maker of heaven and of the earth. I raise its moun¬ 
tains and the creatures which are upon it; I make 

the waters, and the Mehura comes into being. 

I am the maker of heaven, and of the mysteries of 
the two-fold horizon. It is I who have given to all 
the gods the soul which is within them. When I 
open my eyes, there is light; when I close them, 

there is darkness.I make the hours, and the 

hours come into existence. I am Chepera in the 
morning, Ra at noon, Tmu in the evening.” 

Another text says, “ I am yesterday, I am to-day, 
I am to-morrow.” 

“ Hail to thee, O Ptah-tanen, great god who con- 






RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


231 


cealeth his form, .... thou art watching when at 
rest; the father of all fathers and of all gods. . . . 
Watcher, who traversest the endless ages of eternity. 
The heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the 
earth, the water flowed not; thou hast put together 
the earth, thou hast united thy limbs, thou hast 
reckoned thy members ; what thou hast found apart, 
thou hast put into its place; O God, architect of the 
world, thou art without a father, begotten by thine 
own becoming; thou art without a mother, being 
born through repetition of thyself. Thou drivest 
away the darkness by the beams of thine eyes. 
Thou ascendes': into the zenith of heaven, and 
thou comest down even as thou hast risen. When 
thou art a dweller in the infernal world, thy knees 
are above the earth, and thine head is in the upper 
sky. Thou sustainest the substances which thou 
hast made. It is by thine own strength that thou 
movest; thou art raised up by the might of thine own 
arms. Thou weighest upon thyself, kept firm by the 
mystery which is in thee. The roaring of thy voice 
is in the cloud; thy breath is on the mountain-tops ; 
the waters of the inundation cover the lofty trees of 
every region.Heaven and earth obey the com¬ 

mands which thou hast given; they travel by the 
road which thou hast laid down for them; they 
transgress not the path which thou hast prescribed to 



232 


LECTURE VI. 


them, and which thou hast opened to them. 

Thou restest, and it is night; when thine eyes shine 

forth, we are illuminated.0 let us give glory to 

the God who hath raised up the sky, and who 
causeth his disk to float over the bosom of Nut, who 
hath made the gods and men and all their genera¬ 
tions, who hath made all lands and countries, and 
the great sea, in his name of ‘ Let-the-earth-be! ’ 
.... The babe who is brought forth daily, the ancient 
one who has reached the limits of time, the im¬ 
movable one who traverses every path, the height 
which cannot be attained.” 

A beautiful hymn (written, it is expressly stated, 
for the harp), preserved in two MSS. now in the 
British Museum, identifies the Nile with Ra, Amon, 
Ptah and other gods, and even with the maker and 
creator of all things. 

“ Bringer of food ! great lord of provisions, creator 
of all good things. Lord of terrors and of chiefest 
joys ! all are combined in him. He produceth grass 

for the oxen ; providing victims for every god. 

He filleth the granaries, enricheth the storehouses; 
he careth for the state of the poor. He causeth 
growth to fulfil all desires—he never wearies of it. 
He maketh his might a buckler. He is not graven 
in marble as an image bearing the double crown. 
He is not beheld; he hath neither ministrant nor 




RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


233 


offerings; he is not adored in sanctuaries; his abode 
is not known; no shrine [of his] is found with 
painted figures. There is no building that can con¬ 
tain him.Unknown is his name in heaven; he 

doth not manifest his forms! Vain are all represen¬ 
tations.” Yet the last of these passages, which 
would seem to have reference to the purest worship 
of one God, is preceded by lines which speak simply 
of the Nile inundation and of the offerings made to 
it, oxen slain and great festivals celebrated. 

But it is chiefly in honour of Amon 1 that we find 
hymns full of expressions closely approaching the 
language of Monotheism. This pre-eminence which 
Amon enjoys in the literature we have recovered, 
arises no doubt chiefly from the fact of his being the 
principal divinity at Thebes, and consequently of the 
great capital of Egypt during its most splendid 
period. Amon himself, according to the popular 
mythology, was not without a beginning. His le¬ 
gend relates that every year he left his temple at 
Karnak, and paid a visit to the valley of the dead, 
and poured a libation of lustral water upon a table of 
propitiation to his father and mother. Yet he is 
identified with the supreme and uncreated Being in 

1 He is called in the temple of Seti at Qurnah “ the Lord of lords, 
King of the gods, the father of fathers, the powerful of the powerful, the 
substance which was from the beginning.” Denkrn. iii. 150. 



234 


LECTURE VI. 


hymns such as that (now in the Museum at Bulaq) 
from which the following extracts are made: 

“ Hail to thee, Amon Ra, Lord of the thrones of 
the earth, .... the ancient of heaven, the oldest of 
the earth, Lord of all existences, the support of 
things, the support of all things. The One in his 
works, single among the gods; the beautiful bull of 
the cycle of the gods ; chief of all the gods ; Lord of 
truth, father of the gods; maker of men, creator of 
beasts, maker of herbs, feeder of cattle, good power 
begotten of Ptah, . . . . to whom the gods give 
honour. Maker of things below and above, enlight¬ 
ener of the earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity; 
king Ra, triumphant one, chief of the earth. Most 
glorious one, Lord of terror, chief maker of the earth 
after his image, how great are his thoughts above 
every god! Hail to thee, Ra, Lord of law, whose 
shrine is hidden, Lord of the gods ; Chepra in his 
boat, at whose command the gods were made. Atmu, 
maker of men, . . . giving them life, . . . listening 
to the poor who is in distress, gentle of heart when 
one cries to him. Deliverer of the timid man from 
the violent, judging the poor, the poor and the 
oppressed. Lord of wisdom, whose precepts are 
wise; at whose pleasure the Nile overflows : Lord of 
mercy, most loving, at whose coming men live: 
opener of every eye, proceeding from the firmament, 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


235 


causer of pleasure and light; at whose goodness the 
gods rejoice; their hearts revive when they see him. 
O Ra, adored in Thebes, high crowned in the house 
of the obelisk (Heliopolis), sovereign of life, health 
and strength, sovereign Lord of all the gods; who 
art visible in the midst of the horizon, ruler of the 
past generations and the nether world; whose name 
is hidden from his creatures ; in his name, which is 
Amon. 

“ The One, maker of all that is; the one, the only 
one, the maker of existences; from whose eyes man¬ 
kind proceeded, from whose mouth are the gods; 
maker of grass for the cattle (oxen, goats, asses, swine 
and sheep); of fruitful trees for men of future genera¬ 
tions ; causing the fish to live in the river, the birds 
to fill the air; giving breath to those in the egg; 
feeding the bird that flies; giving food to the bird 
that perches, to the creeping thing and the flying 
thing alike; providing food for the rats in their holes; 
feeding the flying things in every tree. 

“ Hail to thee for all these things—the one f alone 
with many hands, lying awake while all men sleep, 
to seek out the good of his creatures, Amon, sustainer 
of all things : Tmu and Horus of the horizon pay 
homage to thee in all their words ; salutation to thee 
because thou abidest in us, adoration to thee because 
thou hast created us. 



236 


LECTURE VI. 


“ Hail to thee, say all creatures : salutation to thee 
from every land; to the height of heaven, to the 
breadth of the earth, to the depth of the sea: the 
gods adore thy majesty, the spirits thou hast created 
exalt thee, rejoicing before the feet of their begetter; 
they cry out, Welcome to thee, father of the fathers 
of all the gods, who raises the heavens, who fixes the 
earth. Maker of beings, creator of existences, sov¬ 
ereign of life, health and strength, chief of the gods, 
we worship thy spirit who alone hast made us; we 
whom thou hast made (thank thee) that thou hast 
given us birth ; we give to thee praises on account of 
thy abiding in us. 

“ Hail to thee, maker of all beings, Lord of law, 
father of the gods; maker of men, creator of beasts; 
Lord of grains, making food for the beast of the 

field.The One alone without a second. 

'King alone, single among the gods; of many names, 
unknown is their number.” 

Another hymn begins: “ I come to thee, O Lord 
of the gods, who hast existed from the beginning, 
eternal God, who hast made all things that are. 
Thy name be my protection ; prolong my term of life 
to a good age; may my son be in my place (after 
me); may my dignity remain with him (and his) for 
ever, as is done to the righteous, who is glorious in 
the house of his Lord.” 




RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 237 

And it is with reference to Amon that we most 
frequently find evidence of the devotion of the people. 
Thus the prayer of Rameses II. when in danger: 

“ Who then art thou, O my father Amon ? Doth 
a father forget his son? Surely a wretched lot 
awaiteth him who opposes thy will; but blessed is he 
who knoweth thee, for thy deeds proceed from a 
heart full of love. I call upon thee, O my father 
Amon! behold me in the midst of many peoples, un¬ 
known to me; all nations are united against me, and 
I am alone; no other is with me. My many soldiers 
have abandoned me, none of my horsemen hath 
looked towards me; and when I called them, none 
hath listened to my voice. But I believe that Amon 
is worth more to me than a million of soldiers, than a 
hundred thousand horsemen and ten thousands of 
brothers and sons, even were they all gathered to¬ 
gether. The work of many men is nought; Amon 
will prevail over them.” 

The same confidence is expressed by humbler men 
in poems contained in papyri of the British Museum. 

“ Oh! Amon, lend thine ear to him who is alone 
before the tribunal; he is poor (and not) rich. The 
court oppresses him ; silver and gold for the clerks 
of the books, garments for the servants. There is no 
other Amon, acting as a judge to deliver one from 
his misery when the poor man is before the tribunal.” 


LECTURE VI. 


238 

“ I cry, the beginning of wisdom is the cry of 
Amon, the rudder of (truth). Thou art he that giveth 
bread to him who has none, that sustaineth the ser¬ 
vant of his house. Let no prince be my defender in 
all my troubles. Let not my memorial be placed 

under the power of any man who is in the house. 

My Lord is my defender. I know his power, to wit 
(he is) a strong defender. There is none mighty ex¬ 
cept him alone. Strong is Amon, knowing how to 
answer, fulfilling the desire of him who cries to him.” 

Another hymn says: "Come to me, O thou Sun; 
Horus of the horizon, give me (help); thou art he 
that giveth (help); there is no help without thee, 
except thou givest it.Let my desires be ful¬ 

filled, let my heart be joyful, my inmost heart in 
gladness. Hear my vows, my humble supplications 

every day, my adorations by night.O Horus of 

the horizon, there is no other besides like him, pro¬ 
tector of millions, deliverer of hundreds of thousands, 

the defender of him that calls to him.Reproach 

me not with my many sins.” 

It is remarkable that a religious reformation at the 
end of the 18th dynasty in behalf of one god, spent 
its special wrath upon the name of Amon. The king 
whose title would under ordinary circumstances have 
been Amenhotep IV., set up the worship of a single 
god whose symbol was the sun-disk; he caused the 






RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


239 


names of other gods, particularly that of Amon, to 
be hammered out of inscriptions even when it only 
occurred in proper names, as in his own, which he 
changed into Chut en Aten , “ Glory of the Sun-disk.” 
And as Thebes was the great seat of worship of 
Amon, he abandoned it and tried to set up another 
capital. His reformation lasted but a short time, his 
own immediate family having abandoned it after his 
death. All his monuments were destroyed by his 
successors, yet several hymns belonging to this 
short-lived phase of religion have escaped destruc¬ 
tion. One of them says: 

“ The whole land of Egypt and all people repeat 
all thy names at thy rising, to magnify thy rising in 
like manner as thy setting. Thou, O God, who in 
truth art the living one, standest before the Two 
Eyes. Thou art he which createst what never was, 
which formest everything, which art in all things: we 
also have come into being through the word of thy 
mouth.” 

Another says: “Thou living God! there is none 
other beside thee! Thou givest health to the eyes by 
thy beams. Creator of all beings. Thou goest up 
on the east horizon of heaven to dispense life to all 
that thou hast created: to man, to four-footed beasts, 
birds, and all manner of creeping things on the earth 
where they live.Grant to thy son who loves 



240 


LECTURE VI. 


thee, life in truth .... that he may live united with 
thee in eternity.” 

The language of these hymns and prayers is ex¬ 
actly similar to that of ordinary Egyptian orthodoxy, 
and there is nothing heterodox in the symbol itself; 
the heresy consisted in refusing worship to all the 
other gods. 

But the magnificent predicates of the 

Pantheism. 11^-11 . . 

one and only God, however recognized 
by Egyptian orthodoxy, never in fact led to actual 
Monotheism. They stopped short in Pantheism— 
namely, in the doctrine that “all individual things 
are nothing but modifications, affections, of the One 
and All, the eternal and infinite God-world; that 
there is but one universal force in nature in different 
forms, in itself eternal and unchangeable.” 

This doctrine is perhaps most clearly expressed in 
a hymn upon the walls of the temple in the oasis of 
El-Khargeh : 

“The gods salute his royal majesty as their Lord, 
who revealeth himself in all that is, and hath names 
in everything, from mountain to stream. That which 
persisteth in all things is Amon. This lordly god 
was from the very beginning. He is Ptah, the 

greatest of the gods.Thy secret is in the 

depths of the secret waters and unknown. Thou hast 
come on the road, thou hast given light in the path, 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


24I 


thou hast overcome all difficulties in thy mysterious 
form. Each god has assumed thy aspect; without 
shape is their type compared to thy form. To thee, 
all things that are give praise when thou returnest 
to the nether world at even. Thou raisest up Osiris 
by the radiance of thy beams. To thee, those give 
praise who lie in their tombs, .... and the damned 

rise up in their abodes.Thou art the King, 

thine is the kingdom of heaven, and the earth is at 
thy will. The gods are in thine hand, and men are 
at thy feet. What god is like to thee ? Thou hast 
made the double world, as Ptah. Thou hast placed 
thy throne in the life of the double world, as Amon. 
Thy soul is the pillar and the ark of the two heavens. 
Thy form emanated at first whilst thou shinest as 

Amon, Ra and Ptah.Shu, Tefnut, Nut and 

Chonsu are thy form, dwelling in thy shrine under 
the types of the ithyphallic god, raising his tall plumes, 

king of the gods.Thou art Mentu Ra. Thou 

art Sekar; thy transformations are into the Nile. 
Thou art Youth and Age. Thou givest life to the 
earth by thy stream. Thou art heaven, thou art 
earth, thou art fire, thou art water, thou art air, and 
whatever is in the midst of them.” 

This very remarkable hymn is put in the mouth of 
the gods of the elements, eight in number, four male 
and four female. What these elements are is not 


11 




242 


LECTURE VI. 


perfectly clear. They used to be thought peculiar to 
the Ptolemaic period, and were then supposed to 
have been borrowed from the four Greek elements, 
Earth, Air, Fire and Water, but they have been re¬ 
cognized in much earlier texts. They are, in fact, the 
eight gods mentioned in the seventeenth chapter of 
the Book of the Dead, and belong to the oldest cos- 
mogonical part of the religion. This chapter, as we 
have already seen, speaks of a time when as yet there 
was no firmament, and when these eight divinities 
were set up as the gods of Hermopolis ; in other 
words, when chaos disappeared, and the elements be¬ 
gan to rule with fixed and unchangeable laws. 

Another hymn, copied by Brugsch at the same 
temple, sings “ the mysterious names of the God who 
is immanent in all things (men em %et neb), the soul of 
Shu (breath) to all the gods. He is the body of the 
living man, the creator of the fruit-bearing tree, the 
author of the inundation; without him nothing liveth 
within the circuit of the earth, whether north or south, 
under his name of Osiris, the giver of light: he is the 
Horus of the living souls, the living god of the gen¬ 
erations yet to come. He is the creator of every 
animal under his names of Ram of the sheep, god of 

the goats, Bull of the cows.He loves the 

scorpion in his hole; he is the god of the crocodiles 
who plunge in the water.he is the god of 




RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


243 


those who rest in their graves. Amon is an image, 
Atmu is an image, Chepera is an image, Ra is an 
image, he alone maketh himself in millions of ways. 
He is a great architect, who was from the beginning, 
who fashioned his body with his own hands, in all 

forms according to his will.Permanent and 

enduring, he never passeth away. Through millions 
upon millions of endless years he traverseth the 
heavens, he compasseth the nether world each 

da y. He is the moon in the night and king of 

the stars, who maketh the division of seasons, months 
and years ; he cometh living everlastingly both in his 
rising and in his setting. There is no other like 
him, his voice is heard, but he remains unseen to 
every creature that breathes. He strengthens the 
heart of the woman in travail, and gives life to those 

who are born from her.He travels in the 

cloud to separate heaven and earth, and again to re¬ 
unite them, permanently abiding in all things, the 
Living One in whom all things live everlastingly.” 

But the Litanies of Ra which M. Naville copied 
from the royal tombs of the 19th dynasty are already 
pantheistic. All things are represented as mere 
emanations from Ra. The learned editor of these 
Litanies has not failed to remark that the pantheistic 
influence of the doctrine has told upon the ethical 
system, which can hardly be said to exist at all; 





244 LECTURE VI. 

whereas the notions of right and wrong, iniquity and 
sin, are perpetually occurring in the Book of the 
Dead and in all the ancient inscriptions. 1 It is only 
out of condescension to popular language that pan¬ 
theistic systems can recognize these notions. If 
everything really emanates from God, there can be 
no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers 
who have been led to pantheistic views have vainly 
endeavoured to harmonize these views with what we 
understand by the notion of sin or moral evil. The 
great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled “ Ethi- 
ca,” but for real ethics we might as profitably con¬ 
sult the Elements of Euclid. 

I believe, therefore, that, after closely approaching 
the point at which polytheism might have turned 
into monotheism, the religious thought of Egypt 
turned aside into a wrong track. And this was fol¬ 
lowed by a decided and hopeless course of retrogres¬ 
sion. Those elements of the Egyptian religion which 
the Greeks and the Jewish and Christian writers 
looked upon with such disgust, had existed from the 
first, but in a very subordinate position ; they now 
became nearly predominant. 

1 “ Puisque toute chose bonne ou mauvaise emane egalement du 
Grand Tout, il est clair que la valeur morale du bien est necessairement 
fort affaiblie. Nous ne trouvons rien dans ces textes qui rappelle la morale 
si elevee qu’enseigne le chapitre 125 du Livre des Morts, rien meme qui 
nous parle de la responsabilit ^.”—La Litanie du Soleil, p. 128. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


245 


There can be no doubt that, from the earliest days, 
symbolism had played a great part in the religion of 
Egypt. We are ourselves so familiar with certain 
symbols in Hebrew or Christian writings, or with the 
poetic figures which classical literature has brought 
home to us, that when we meet with symbols of 
another kind, we are far more shocked than we really 
have a right to be. We think it natural enough to 
speak of a hero we venerate as a lion or an eagle, 
while quite other associations are connected with a 
fox or a dog Christians have other associations 
with the lamb or the dove. But the Egyptians, as 
far back as we know them, seemed to have studied 
the animal creation with a minute accuracy which 
only the natural history of our own times can rival. 
Their symbolism is not necessarily the same as ours. 
Certain characteristics of animals have in the course 
of ages fixed themselves in our minds, but in this we 
are simply following a tradition. Other character¬ 
istics of the same animals had impressed the minds of 
the Egyptians, and their symbolism is based on the 
peculiar observations made by them. Some of the 
inscriptions enable us to understand parts of the 
symbolism. Who of us would like to be called a 
crocodile, a jackal, or even a young bull? Yet the 
Egyptian poet gives these names to Tehutimes III. 
in a song of triumph, and he at the same time en- 


LECTURE VI. 


246 

lightens us as to the meaning of these words : the 
crocodile is terrible in the waters, and not to be 
encountered without disaster; the young bull whets 
his horns, and is not to be attacked without peril; 
and so on. The “bull” is a favourite name for a king 
or a god. However foreign the symbol may be to 
our own poetical conceptions, we can easily under¬ 
stand how an ancient agricultural people was 
impressed by certain qualities of the animal, his 
might, his courage, the terror he inspires when angry, 
the protection he affords to the herd, and his marital 
or paternal relations to it. The rays of the sun and 
the moon’s crescent have at all times suggested the 
notion of horns. The cow in Egypt, as well as in 
India, represents the Sky, 1 the Dawn and other 
powers. The hawk was among birds what the bull 
was among quadrupeds, and they admired his rapid, 
lofty and unerring flight, the piercing sight which 
nothing can escape, and the irresistible grasp of his 
talons. All this with us is mere poetry, but all early 
language is poetry. There is nothing more certainly 
established by the science of language than “ the fact 
that all words expressive of immaterial conceptions 
are derived by metaphor from words expressive of 
sensible ideas.” But besides such metaphors as those 

1 See Transactions of the Society of Biblical Literature , Vol. IV. pi. 
I, where the cow has the stars upon its belly. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 247 

of which I have just been speaking, and which are 
intelligible even when translated, there are others 
which are necessarily peculiar to the language in 
which they originated. The names of Seb and of 
Tehuti, as we have seen, were to the Egyptians con¬ 
nected with the names of the goose and the ibis. 
Anpu (Anubis) “ is apparently,” as Mr. Goodwin says, 
“the ancient Egyptian name for a jackal.” Sebek, 
one of the names of the Sun-god, is also the name of 
a kind of crocodile. It is not improbable that the cat, 
in Egyptian mau, became the symbol of the Sun-god, 
or Day, because the word mau also means light. It 
is, I think, quite easy to see how the mythological 
symbolism arose through these varieties of meta¬ 
phorical language. And this metaphorical language 
reacted upon thought, and, as in other religions, 
obtained the mastery. 

The triumph of the symbol over the thought is 
most sensibly visible in the development of the wor¬ 
ship of the Apis Bull. This worship is indeed as old 
as the age of the Pyramids, but an inspection of the 
tombs of the bulls in the Serapeum discovered by 
M. Mariette under the sands of Saqara, shows how 
immeasurably greater the devotion to the sacred 
animals was in the later times than in the former. 
Dean Stanley 1 has described these: 

1 “ Sinai and Palestine,” p. lii. 


248 


LECTURE VI. 


“Long galleries, hewn in the rock and opening 
from time to time—say every fifty yards—into high- 
arched vaults, under each of which reposes the most 
magnificent black marble sarcophagus that can be 
conceived—a chamber rather than a coffin 1 —smooth 
and sculptured within and without; grander by far 
than ever the granite sarcophagi of the Theban king, 
—how much grander than any human sepulchres any¬ 
where else! And all for the successive corpses of the 
bull Apis ! These galleries formed part of the great 
temple of Serapis, in which the Apis mummies were 
deposited; and here they lay, not in royal, but in 
divine state. The walls of the entrances are covered 
with ex-votos. In one porch there is a painting at 
full length', black and white, of the bull himself as he 
was in life.” 

No one who has seen the tombs of these strange 
gods can doubt the accounts given by the classical 
writers as to the extravagant expenses incurred at a 
single funeral. But if one of the funerals of an Apis 
cost fifty talents, not less than a hundred talents are 
said to have been expended by curators of other 
sacred animals. The Apis was called “ the second 
life of Ptah,” the god of Memphis. The sacred Ram 
of Mendes was called “ the life of Ra.” Three other 
sacred Rams are mentioned, “ the soul of Osiris,” 

1 A breakfast-party has been held in one of these coffins. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


249 


“ the soul of Shu,” and “ the soul of Chepra.” 1 They 
were also conceived as united in one, who is repre¬ 
sented with four heads, and bears the name of Shef- 
that , Primeval Force. This name I believe to be 
comparatively modern, and to bear the impress of 
pantheistic speculation rather than of mythology; 
but the word Ba , which means a ram, also means 
soul; so that here again there is every probability 
that the god originated, like so many others, in homo¬ 
nymous metaphor. The encouragement given to his 
worship by the Ptolemies is circumstantially exhibi¬ 
ted in the great tablet of Mendes published by M. 
Mariette, 2 and translated by Brugsch-Bey. 3 

If Pantheism strongly contributed to 

,,j t , c .1 • -i Materialism, 

the development of this animal wor¬ 
ship and to all the superstition therewith connected, 
it also led to simple Materialism. The hymns at 
Dendera in honour of the goddess Hathor irresisti¬ 
bly remind one of the opening of the poem of Lu¬ 
cretius. Hathor, like the mother of the Aeneadae, 
is “sole mistress of the nature of things, and without 
her nothing rises up into the divine borders of light, 
nothing grows to be glad or lovely;” “through her 


1 Or, according to another text, “ of Seb.’’ 

2 Monumens divers , pi. 43, 44. 

8 Zeitschrift , 1875, P- 33 * An English version has been published in 
the “ Records of the Past.” 


250 


LECTURE VI 


every kind of living thing is conceived, rises up and 
beholds the light of the sun.” 1 But we know the 
Roman poet’s apology 2 for these poetical concep¬ 
tions, Ki however well and beautifully they may be set 
forth.” “ If any one thinks proper to call the sea 
Neptune, and corn Ceres, and chooses rather to mis¬ 
use the name of Bacchus than to utter the term that 
belongs to that liquor, let us allow him to declare 
that the earth is mother of the gods, if he only for- 

1 Per te genus omne animantum 
Concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis ; 

Te dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli 
Adventumque tuura, tibi suavis daedala tellus 
Summittit flores tibi rident aequora ponti 
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. . . . 

Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas 

Nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras 

Exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam, &c. 

De Rerum Natura , i. 4—9, 21—24 : Munro. 

I do not quote these lines to prove that the hymns of Dendera are 
atheistic or epicurean, but that they are not inconsistent with an entire 
disbelief in religion. All these hymns are absolutely epicurean. 

2 Hie siqui? mare Neptunum Cereremque vocare 
Constituit fruges et Bacchi nomine abuti 
Mavolt quam laticis proprium proferre vocamen, 

Concedamus ut hie terrarum dictitet orbem 
Esse deum matrem, dum vera re tamen ipse 
Religione animum turpi contingere parcat. 


Ib. ii. 652—657. 


RELIGIOUS BOOHS AND HYMNS. 


251 


bear in earnest to stain his mind with foul religion.” 
Man had formerly been led to associate the earth and 
sun and sky with the notion of infinite power behind 
those phenomena; he now retraced his steps and 
recognized in the universe nothing but the mere phe¬ 
nomena. The heathen Plutarch and the Christian 
Origen equally give evidence of this atheistical inter¬ 
pretation put upon the myths of Osiris and Isis. 
Plutarch protests against the habit of explaining 
away the very nature of the gods by resolving it, as 
it were, into mere blasts of wind, or streams of rivers, 
and the like, such as making Dionysos to be wine 
and Hephaistos fire. We might suppose that Plu¬ 
tarch is simply alluding to Greek speculation, but it 
is certain 'that the Egyptian texts of the late period 
are in the habit of substituting the name of a god for 
a physical object, such as Seb for the earth, Shu for 
the air, and so on. Origen, as a Christian apologist, 
sees no advantage to be gained by his adversaries in 
giving an allegorical interpretation to Osiris and Isis, 
“for they will nevertheless teach us to offer divine 
worship to cold water and the eart # h, which is subject 
to men and all the animal creation.” 

The transformation of the Egyptian religion is no¬ 
where more apparent than in the view of the life 
beyond the grave which is exhibited on a tablet 
which has already been referred to, that of the wife 


252 


LECTURE VI. 


of Pasherenptah. This lady thus addressed her hus¬ 
band from the grave : 1 

“Oh my brother, my spouse, cease not to drink 
and to eat, to drain the cup of joy, to enjoy the love 
of woman, and to make holiday: follow thy desires 
each day, and let not care enter into thy heart, as 
long as thou livest upon earth. For as to Amend, it 
is the land of heavy slumber and of darkness, an 
abode of sorrow for those who dwell there. They 
sleep in their forms; they wake not any more to see 
their brethren; they recognize not their father and 
their mother; their heart is indifferent to their wife and 
children. Every one [on earth] enjoys the water of 
life, but thirst is by me. The water cometh to him 
who remaineth on earth, but I thirst for the water 
which is by me. I know not where I am since I 
came into this spot; I weep for the water which 
passes by me. I weep for the breeze on the brink of 
the stream, that through it my heart may be re¬ 
freshed in its sorrow. For as to the god who is here, 
‘ Death-Absolute ’ is his name. 2 He calleth on all, 
and all men come to obey him, trembling with fear 
before him. With him there is no respect for gods 

1 Sharpe, Egyptian Inscriptions , i. pi. 4. 

2 Tov 7 ravUkedpov 6eov .... 

"Of otxT ev "AiSuv tov davdvr' Dievdepoi. 

Aesch. Suppl. 414. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 253 

or men ; by him great ones are as little ones. One 
feareth to pray to him, for he listeneth not. 1 No one 
comes to invoke him, for he is not kind to those who 
adore him; he has no respect to any offering which 
is made to him.” There is something of this un¬ 
doubtedly in the song of King Antuf and in the Lay 
of the Harper, but the moral which the harper taught 
has utterly disappeared: “ Mind thee of the day 
when thou too shalt start for that land.” There is 
no allusion to the necessity of a good life; no recom¬ 
mendation to be just and hate iniquity; no assurance 
that he who loveth what is just shall triumph. The 
tablet on which this strange inscription is found has 
upon it the figures of several of the Egyptian gods, 
in whom it professes faith, but the religion must have 
been already at its end when such a text could be 
inscribed on a funereal tablet. 

The short time which is now left will 

. Influence of 

not allow me to enter at length into a Egyptian upon 
discussion of certain questions which foreign thought, 
have naturally arisen as to the influence of Egyptian 
upon foreign thought, as, for instance, on the Hebrew 
or Greek religions and philosophies. It may be con- 

1 La Mort a des rigueurs h nulle autre pareilles, 

On a beau la prier; 

La cruelle qu’elle est se bouche les oreilles, 

Et nous laisse crier. 


254 


LECTURE VI. 


fidently asserted that neither Hebrews nor Greeks 
borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt. It ought, I 
think, to be a matter of wonder that, after a long time 
of bondage, the Israelites left Egypt without having 
even learnt the length of the year. The Hebrew year 
consisted of twelve lunar months, each of them empi¬ 
rically determined by actual inspection of the new 
moon, and an entire month was intercalated when¬ 
ever it was found that the year ended before the 
natural season. The most remarkable point of con¬ 
tact between Hebrew and Egyptian religion is the 
identity of meaning between “El Shaddai” and nutar 
nutra; but the notion which is expressed by these 
words is common to all religion, and is only alluded to 
as characterizing the religion of the patriarchs in con¬ 
trast to the new revelation made to Moses. But even 
this revelation is said to have been borrowed from 
Egypt. I have repeatedly seen it asserted that Moses 
borrowed his concept of God, and the sublime words, 
ehyeh asher ehyeh (" I am that I am,” in the Au¬ 
thorized Version), from the Egyptian nuk pu nak. I 
am afraid that some Egyptologist has to bear the 
responsibility of this illusion. It is quite true that in 
several places of the Book of the Dead the three 
words nuk pu nuk are to be found; it is true that nuk 
is the pronoun I, and that the demonstrative pu often 
serves to connect the subject and predicate of a sen- 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS . 


255 


tence. But the context of the words requires to be 
examined before we can be sure that we have just an 
entire sentence before us, especially as pn generally 
comes at the end of a sentence. Now if we look at 
the passages of the Book of the Dead where these 
words occur, we shall see at once that they do not 
contain any mysterious doctrine about the Divine na¬ 
ture. In one of these passages 1 the deceased says, 
“ It is I who know the ways of Nu.” In another place 2 
he says, “ I am the Ancient One in the country [or 
fields]; 3 it is I who am Osiris, who shut up his father 
Seb and his mother Nut on that day of the great 
slaughter.” “ It is I who am Osiris, the Ancient 
One.” In another recension of the same text, con¬ 
tained in the 96th chapter, the words nuk pu nuk 
disappear, because the narrative is in the third per¬ 
son. “ He is the Bull in the fields, he is Osiris who 
shut up his father,” and so forth. I have looked 
through a number of works professing to discover 
Egyptian influences in Hebrew institutions, but have 
not even found anything worth controverting. Purely 
external resemblances may no doubt be discovered in 
abundance, but evidence of the transmission of ideas 

1 Todt. 78, 21. 

2 lb. 31, 4. 

3 Two of the many names of Horus are ,f the Youth in Town ” and 
“ the Lad in the Country.” Todt. 85, 8, 9. 


256 


LECTURE VI. 


will be sought in vain. I cannot find that any of the 
idolatries or superstitions of the Israelites are derived 
from Egyptian sources. The golden calf has been 
supposed, but on no sufficient grounds, to represent 
Apis or Mnevis. The worship of oxen, as symbols 
of a Divine power, is not peculiar to Egypt, but is 
met with ffi all the ancient religions. The chariot 
and horses of the sun which the kings of Judah had 
set up “ at the entering in of the house of the Lord,” 
and which Joash burnt with fire, show that the 
Israelites had an independent mythology of their 
own. 

The existence of Egyptian elements in Hellenic 
religion and philosophy has long since been dis¬ 
proved. The supposed travelers of Pythagoras and 
other ancient philosophers to Eastern climes, Chal- 
daea, Persia, India and Egypt, are fabulous inven¬ 
tions, the historical evidence of which does not begin 
till at least two centuries after the death of the phil¬ 
osopher, but continues increasing after this time. 
Internal evidence tells the same tale as the external. 
Every step in the history of Greek philosophy can be 
accounted for and explained from native sources, and 
it is not merely unnecessary, but impossible (to the 
historian of philosophy, ridiculously impossible), to 
imagine a foreign teacher, to whom the Greeks would 
never have listened, as being the author of doctrines 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS . 


which without his help the Greeks would themselves 
certainly have discovered, and at the very time that 
they did so. 

The importance of Alexandria as a medium of 
interchange of ideas between the Eastern and Western 
worlds must also be considered as exploded. Noth¬ 
ing was more common, about forty or fifty years ago, 
than to hear learned men account for the presence of 
Oriental ideas in Europe by the transmission of these 
ideas through the channel of Alexandria. Alex¬ 
andria was supposed to be the seat of Oriental phil¬ 
osophy, and Philo, Origen, Porphyry, Plotinos and 
other great names, were imagined to be the repre¬ 
sentatives of the alliance between Greek and Oriental 
thought. All this is now considered as unhistorical 
as the reign of Jupiter in Crete. It was a mere a 
priori fancy, which has not been verified by facts. 
The most accurate analysis of the Alexandrian phil¬ 
osophy has not succeeded in discovering a single 
element in it which requires to be referred to an 
Oriental source. All attempts to refer Alexandrian 
opinions to Eastern sources have proved abortive. 
And long before the great work of Zeller on Greek 
Philosophy had dealt with the problem in detail, M. 
Ampere had shown hcv extremely improbable the 
received hypothesis was. Alexandria was a com¬ 
mercial Greek town, inhabited by a population which 


258 LECTURE VI. 

cared not the least for Eastern ideas. The learned 
men in it were Greeks who had the utmost contempt 
for barbarians and their opinions. Of the Egyptian 
language and literature, they were profoundly igno¬ 
rant. “ It is incredible,” he says, “ to what an 
extent the Greeks of Alexandria remained strangers 
to the knowledge of the Egyptian language and 
writing; one could not understand it if there were 
not other instances of the contemptuous aversion of 
the Greeks and Romans to the study of the barbarous 
languages.” The greatest part of the information 
they give us is utterly erroneous, and even when it 
has been derived from an authentic source, it never 
fails to be completely hellenized in passing through a 
Greek channel. The Oriental works, like those at¬ 
tributed to Zoroaster, said to have been preserved in 
the Library at Alexandria, were Greek forgeries. 
“ En somme,” M. Ampere says, “Alexandre fut tres 
grecque, assez juive et presque point egyptienne.” 1 
And if Alexandria was not the means of communica¬ 
ting Egyptian ideas to the Western world, still less 
was it the channel of learning from the farther East. 
It is an error to suppose that Alexandria was on the 
chief line of traffic between Europe and Asia. Dur- 

1 Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1846, p. 735. Ampere refutes the 
opinions of Matter and of Jules Simon as expressed in their Histories of 
the Alexandrian School. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 


2 59 


ing the whole period which followed the foundation 
of Alexandria down to the Roman times, there was 
no direct communication between this city and the 
distant East. Indian traffic was in the hands of the 
seafaring Arabs of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of 
Oman and the Gulf of Akaba. It came to the 
shores of the Mediterranean through Seleucia, 
Antioch and Palmyra, or through Gaza and Petra, 
the chief town of the Nabataeans . 1 

The interest which the history of 

Conclusion. 

Egyptian religion inspires must be de¬ 
rived solely from itself, not from any hypothetical 
connection with other systems. 

We have seen Egypt a powerful and highly civil¬ 
ized kingdom not less than two thousand years 
before the birth of Moses, with religious beliefs and 
institutions at least externally identical with those 

1 “ Presque tout le temps que les Ptolemees regnerent en Egypte, les 
navires qui partaient des cotes egyptiennes ne depassaient pas laf cote 
meridionale de l’Arabie. Ils relachaient soit dans un port situe en terre 
ferme, notamment Aden, ou bien dans quelq’ lie, telle que Socotora. 
Lh arrivaient les navires arabes, indiens et malais, avec les produits 
destines k l’occident.”—Reinaud, “ Sur le royaume de la Mes£ne et de 
la Kharas^ne ” in th e Mem. de I Acad, des Inscr. t. xxiv. pt. 2, p. 215. 
See also the chapter vi. (Du Commerce) of Lumbroso, “ Recherches sur 
l’economie politique de l'Egypte sous les Lagides.” M. Reinaud has 
also shown that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which displays an 
accuracy of information quite unknown to Strabo, Pliny or Ptolemy, was 
not written before the middle of the third century after Christ. 


26 o 


LECTURE VI. 


which it possessed till the last years of its existence. 
This religion, however, was not from the first that 
mere worship of brutes which strangers imagined in 
the days of its decline. 

The worship of the sacred animals was not a prin¬ 
ciple, but a consequence; it presupposes the rest of 
the religion as its foundation, and it acquired its full 
development and extension only in the declining 
periods of the Egyptian history. 

It is based upon symbols derived from the mytho- 
logy. 

The mythology has exactly the same origin as the 
mythology of our own Aryan ancestors. The early 
language had no words to express abstract concep¬ 
tions, and the operations of nature were spoken of in 
terms which would now be thought poetical or at 
least metaphorical, but were then the simplest ex¬ 
pressions of popular intuition. The nomina became 
numina. 

The Egyptian mythology, as far as I can see, dealt 
only with those phenomena of nature which are con¬ 
spicuously the result of fixed law, such as the ris¬ 
ing and setting of the sun, moon and stars . 1 The 

1 This is my reason for being inclined (see p. 113) to identify the god" 
dess Tefnut with the Dew, rather than with the Rain. Tefnut, as a 
common noun, is undoubtedly some form of moisture, but rain, though 
far from unknown in ancient Egypt, must always have been a compara- 


RELIGIOUS BOOR'S AND HYMNS. 261 

recognition of law and order as existing throughout 
the universe, underlies the whole system of Egyptian 
religion. The Egyptian moat, derived like the San¬ 
skrit rita, from merely sensuous impressions, became 
the name for moral order and righteousness. 

Besides the powers recognized by the mythology, 
the Egyptians f r0 m the very first spoke of the Power 
by whom the whole physical and moral government 
of the universe is directed, upon whom each indi¬ 
vidual depends, and to whom he is responsible. 

The moral code which they identified with the law 
governing the universe, was a pure and noble one. 
The summary of it as given in the Book of the Dead 
has often been quoted : “ He hath given bread to the 
hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked; he 
hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath made 
the offerings to the gods, and paid the due rites to 
the departed.” 

The rites are paid to the departed, because death is 
but the beginning of a new life, and that life will 
never end. 

tively rare and apparently irregular phenomenon. Otherwise it would 
be very tempting to identify the two lions, Shu, and Tefnut, children of 
Ra, with the Wind and the Rain. I do not find any god as the personifi¬ 
cation of Thunder, which rather appears as the roaring of a lion-god, or 
the bellowing of a bull god. This illustrates the position which oc¬ 
casional phenomena occupy in Egyptian mythology. The position of 
Fire in this mythology affords matter for an interesting inquiry. 


262 


LECTURE VI. 


A sense of the Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good, 
governing the world, and upon which we are de¬ 
pendent, of Right and Wrong, of Holiness and Virtue, 
of Immortality and Retribution—such are the ele¬ 
ments of Egyptian religion. But where are these grand 
elements of a religion found in their simple purity ? 

Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs 
up at a peculiar stage of human culture, and is in its 
first stage as harmless as it is inevitable. It ceases to 
be harmless when its original meaning is forgotten, 
when, instead of being the simple expression of man’s 
intuition of real facts, it obtains a mastery over his 
thought, and leads him to conclusions which are not 
involved in the original premises. This disease of 
thought was terribly aggravated, I believe, by the 
early 'development of Art, and the forms which it 
assumed in Egypt. That Power which the Egyptians 
recognized without any mythological adjunct, to 
whom no temple was ever raised, “ who was not 
graven in stone,” “ whose shrine was never found 
with painted figures,” “ who had neither ministrants 
nor offerings,” and “ whose abode was unknown,” 
must practically have been forgotten by the worship¬ 
pers at the magnificent temples of Memphis, Helio¬ 
polis, Abydos, Thebes or Dendera, where quite other 
deities received the homage of prayer and praise and 
sacrifice. 


RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 263 

A highly cultured and intelligent people like the 
Egyptians, it is true, did not simply acquiesce in the 
polytheistic view of things, and efforts are visible 
from the very first to cling to the notion of the Unity 
of God. The “self-existent” or “self-becoming” One, 
the One, the One of One, “ the One without a 
second,” “ the Beginner of becoming, from the first,” 
“ who made all things, but was not made,” are ex¬ 
pressions which we meet constantly in the religious 
texts, and they are applied to this or that god, each 
in his turn being considered as the supreme God of 
gods, the Maker and Creator of all things. But the 
conclusion which seems to have remained was, that 
all gods were in fact but names of the One who 
resided in them all. But this God is no other than 
Nature. Both individuals and entire nations may 
long continue to hold this view, without drawing the 
inevitable conclusion, that if there is no other God 
than this, the world is really without a God. But 
when the conclusion is once brought home, it is, as 
we have seen in our own day, most eagerly accepted. 
But the fate of a religion which involves such a con¬ 
clusion, and with that conclusion the loss of faith in 
immortality, and even in the distinction of Right and 
Wrong, except as far as they are connected with 
ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed . 1 

1 On looking back over these pages, I find that I have quoted (p. io c ) 


LECTURE VI. 


264 

from Professor Max Muller an etymology of the Sanskrit Brahman 
which is at variance with his more mature judgment in Hibbert Lectures, 
p. 358, note. 

At page 20, the name of M. Guyesse is too important to be omitted 
from the list of French scholars. M. Revillout, the most eminent Coptic 
scholar now in Europe, is also highly distinguished for his publication 
and interpretation of demotic records. To the German names I should 
add those of Pietschmann, Erman and Meyer. 

And I do not think it out of place here to say, that as the thanks of 
scholars are due to private persons like Mr. Sharpe and the late Mr. 
Bonomi, for the publication of accurate Egyptian texts, no small amount 
of gratitude should be felt towards booksellers like Messrs. Hinrichs, of 
Leipzig, for the publication of so many inestimable works by Brugsch, 
Dumichen and Mariette, which, however indispensable to the student, 
have necessarily but a limited sale, and cannot be immediately re¬ 
munerative. 


t 


INDEX. 


AAHHOTEP, Queen, 68. 
Abdellatif, on ruins of Memphis, 25. 
Abydos, tablet of, 38,. 68. 

Achmu uretu , the stars which set, 
112. 

Akerblad, 12, 16. 

Alexandria, 257. 

Amenemhat, Instructions of, 78. 
Amenti, 136 

Amesi, ithyphallic form of Horus,. 
207. 

Amon, god of Thebes, 86, 232. 

— hymns to, 232. 

— proscription of name, 43, 237. 
Ampere, 80, 258. 

Anaxandrides, 3. 

Anchiu, “ the living,’’ designation 
of the departed, 133. 

Angels, 165. 

— of death, 165. 

Ani, Maxims of, 78, 104, 1^4, 165. 
Anpu, Anubis, the Dusk, child of 
the Sun and of Sunset, 116,118, 
247. 

— 0 he has swallowed his own fa¬ 

ther, 116. 

Ansted, 52. 

Antiphanes, 3. 

Antuf, Song of, 72. 

12 


Antuf aa, 47. 

Apap, the dragon. Darkness, 113. 
Apis, 36, 88, 247, 248. 

Apollonios of Tyana, 7. 

Ass, supposed worship of, by Chris¬ 
tians and Jews, 5. 

BA, steel, 137. 

Ba signifies “ram” and 0 soul," 
249. 

Baillet, 20. 

Bechten, possessed princess of, 161. 
Belzoni, 23. 

Bergman, 20. 

Biot, 50. 

Birch, 10, 14, 19, 22, 47, 55, 184, 
2x9. 

Bohlen, P. von, on India, 30. 

Book of the Dead described, 180. 

— of the Lamentations of Isis and 

Nephthys, 213. 

— of glorifying Osiris, 215. 

— of the Breaths of Life, 216. 
Brahman, 103, 264. 

Briicker, 9. 

Brugsch, 19, 105, 125, 133, i 36 , 219, 
222, 242, 249. 

Buddhism, 109. 

Bulaq Museum, 63, 69, 167. 

265 




266 


INDEX. 


Bull, symbol of kings and gods, 245. 
Bunsen, 205. 

CALENDARS, 49, 84, 163, 

Canon, hieratic, of Turin, 38. 

Castes, 80. 

Cat, symbol of Light, 118, 247. 
Celibacy, 148. 

Celsus, 8. 

Chabas, 20, 22, 50, 74, 75, 77, i<>5. 

147, 160, 163, 171, 219, 227. 
Champollion, 14. 
Champollion-Figeac, 16. 

Cher-heb , a priestly official, 137. 

“ Children of inertness,’’ 209. 

China, 130. 

Chonsu, the Moon, 161, 187. 

Chu , glorified one, the dead, 137. 
Chut en Aten, 44, 239. 

Clement of Alexandria, 1. 

Cook, Canon, 20. 

Cow signifies the Sky, the Dawn 
and other powers, 246. 

Curtius, 99, 100, 124. 

DARKNESS, mythological forms 
of: 

—. Apap, 113. 

— Anpu, 116. 

— Set, 119. 

— Maka, 119. 

— Crocodile, 112. 

Dawn, names of the : 

— Isis, 115. 

— Hathor, 91, 165. 

— Rennet, 166. 

— Neith, 186. 

“ Death-absolute,” 252. 

Decimal notation, 85. 

Deities, 86. 

Dendera, Zodiac of, 30. 


Destiny, 165. 

Deveria, 20, 217. 

Diodorus, 5, 135. 

Dreams, 161. 

Dual form of all words designating 
space, traversed by the sun, 
203. 

Diimichen, 20, 24, 50, 70, 121, 133, 
170. 

EARTH, the father of gods, 115. 

— his wife, the Sky, 115. 

Ebers, 20, 219. 

Egg of Ra, 200. 

— Seb, 115. 

Eight elementary gods, 202, 241. 
Eisenlohr, 20. 

El, God, power, 101. 

Em hotep=m pace, 136. 

Enneads, 86. 

Erman, 264. 

Ethnology of Egypt, 54. 

Everlasting life, 133. 

Evil eye, 164. 

Eye, name of the sun, 195. 

FABLES of ZEsop are found in 
Egyptian, 80. 

Fergusson on the architecture of 
Egypt, 129, 153. 

Firmament of steel, 136. 

Fravasuis, 129, 153. 

GENEALOGIES, 48. 

Genius, 153. 

Gensler, 49. 

George, St., and the Dragon, 122. 
Gibbon, 222. 

God, true notion of, 223. 

Golden calf, 256, 

Golenischeff, 20, 105. 





INDEX. 


267 


Goodwin, 20, 22, 79, 171, 219, 
Goose, 115, 247. 

Gr^baut, 20, 127, 170, 172, 203. 
Guizot, 159. 

Guyesse, 207, 264 

HALL of Nut=Heaven, 198. 

— Seb= Earth, 198. 

— Maat=the Nether world, 198. 
Harem, 81. 

Harper, Lay of the, 72. 

Hatasu, Queen (wrongly called Ha- 
shop), 42, 44, 168. 

Hathor, many names of, 90. 

— the Dawn, 165. 

— the Fates, 165. 

— name given to beatified women, 

192. 

Hawk, name of the sun, 246. 
Hearne, 148. 

Heaven, the mother of gods and 
wife of Earth, 198. 

— the Hall of Nut, 198. 

Helmholtz, 13. 

Hen en anchiu, name of coffin, 138. 
Hen ka , a priestly official, 155. 
Henotheism, 226. 

Henry, Matthew, 51. 

Hermes Trismegistos, 120. 
Herodotos, 9. 

Hincks, 19, 47. 

Horns, symbols of sun or moon, 
246. 

Horrack, 20, 206, 216. 

Horus, the sun in his full strength, 
116. 

— blindness of, 118. 

— Eye of, xi8. 

— “ the Youth in Town,” 255. 

— “the Lord in the Country,” 255. 
Hue, 206. 

Hyksos, 45. 


Hymn to Osiris, 226. 

— Ptah, 230. 

— the Nile, 2311 

— Amon, 232, 237, 238. 

— Pantheistic, 240, 242. 

— to Hathor, 249. 

IBIS, 120, 247. 

Ideography in modern writing, 179. 
Idolatry, 155. 

'Iepof, etymology of, 99. 

Imago , a ghost, 155. 

Inscription of Apis tablets, 36. 

— Canopus, 21. 

— obelisk of Philse, 17. 

—‘Pasherenptah and his wife, 163. 

— Ptolemy, son of Lagos, 146. 

— Rosetta, 11. 

Isaios, 148. 

Isis, the Dawn, daughter of Earth 
and Sky, sister and wife of Osi¬ 
ris, 116. 

JABLONSKI, 9, 

Jamblichos, 222. 

Joshua, book of, 51. 

Juvenal, 4. 

KA, 140, 155. 

Kamit , the Black land, name of 
Egypt, 23, 210. 

King, the, as god, 167. 

Kircher, 10. 

Klaproth, 15, 16. 

LAMENTATIONS of Isis and 
Nephthys, 211. 

Language of Egypt, 56. 

Lauth, 20, 50, 70, 79, 105. 

Lefebure, 20, 117,127, 212. 

Legend, 108,109. 

Leonidas, 148. 



268 


INDEX. 


Lepsius, 19, 20, 91, 180, 205. 
Lieblein, 20, 48. 

Litanies of Ra, 244. 

Lucretius, 250. 

Lunar eclipses, 117. 

Lustral water, 144. 

Lyell, 53, 131 and note. 
Lushington, 20. 

MAATS, 73, 123. 

Magical literature, 220. 

Maine, Sir Henry, 130. 

Maka, crocodile god, son of Set, 119. 
Manetho, 49. 

Manicheism, 151. 

Manuscripts, Egyptian, Greek, La¬ 
tin and Hebrew, 176 
Mariette, 19, 24, 36, 55, 136, 163, 
247, 249. 

Marriage, 80. 

Maspero, 20, 98, 219. 

Materialism, 289. 

McLennan, 30, 31. 

Mena, 35. 

Menti, afterwards Amend, 136. 
Mentu, a name of the sun, 91. 
Mentuhotep III., 47. 

Moira, 167. 

Monasticism, 150. 

Monogamy, 81. 

Monotheism, 92, 240. 

Moon, the measurer, 120. 

— names of Tehuti, 120. Chonsu, 

161. An, 212. 

— Qsiris identified with, 116, 212. 
Moral code, 73. 

Moral doctrines of the Book of the 
Dead, 202. 

Moses not author of Pentateuch, 52. 

— contemporary of Raineses II., 52. 
Muller, Professor Max, 58,103,104, 

113, 122, 147, 226, 264. 


Mykerinos, 133. 

Myth, 109. 

NAHRE-SE-CHNUMHOTEP — 
tomb ot, 43, 138, 140. 

Names, superstitious repetition of, 
201. 

Naville, 20, 128, 207, 243. 

Neb-attch, lord of life, name of cof¬ 
fin, 133 - 

Neith, the Dawn, mother of the 
Sun, goddess of Sais, 186. 

Nemmat , infernal block, 196. 

Nephthys, the Sunset, sister of the 
Sun and of the Dawn, wedded 
to the darkness, and mother of 
the Dusk, 116. 

Newman, J. H., on the notion of 
God, 225. 

Nile, hymn to the, 232. 

Nile mud, depth of, 52. 

Nomes, 84. 

Notation, decimal, 84. 

Nu, father of the gods, the celestial 
ocean, 113, 206, 207. 

Nuk pu nuk, 254. 

Nu?itar , nasalized form of nutar, 99. 

Nut, goddess, Heaven, 115. 

Nutar, its meaning, 96. 

Nutar nutra=K\ Shaddai, 102. 

Nutra, 98. 

Nutrit, name of town, 102. Eye¬ 
ball, 102. 

“ One of One,’’ 96. 

Origen, 2, 251. 

Osiris, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 114, 116. 

Owen, Prof., 56. 

Oxyrinchus, 223. 

PALIN, 10. 

Pantheism, 240. 




INDEX. 


269 


Papyri, age of, 175. 

Paradigms, 58. 

Pasherenptah, 146, 163, 252. 
Pentaur, 61. 

Perring, 44. 

Persia, 147, 153, 157. 

Phallic emblems, imaginary, 202. 
Philo, 7. 

Philostratos, 7. 

Pierret, 20, 213. 

Pietschmann, 264. 

Pegnorius, 11. 

Pithom and Rameses, 39. 

Pitris, 129. 

Pleyte, 20, 219. 

Plutarch, 109, 251. 

Polygamy, 81. 

Polytheism, 88. 

Porphyry, 8, 222. 

Possession, 160. 

Pott on Proper Names, no. 

Power, words of, 200. 

Ptah, the Opener, the Artist, 185. 
Ptah-hotep, Maxims of, 78,104,185. 
Pyramid, date of Great, 51. 
Pythagorean system not of Egyptian 
origin, 190, 256. 

QUTNA, 24. 

RA, the Sun, 113. 

Ram of Mendes, 248. 

Rameses, name of, 38. 

Rameses II., great inscription at 
Abydos, 141. 

— prayer to Amon, 237. 

Reinisch, 20. 

Renan, 62. 

Renenet, 166. 

Revillout, 264. 

Rhind papyri, 218. 

Robiou, 20. 


Rochemonteix, 20. 

Romien, 50. 

Rosetta inscriptions, 11. 

Rossi, 20, 58. 

Rouge, E. de, 19, 22, 41, 49, 58, 92, 
98,102, 105,123, 179, 205, 206, 
207. 

Rouge, J. de, 20. 

Royal Lists, 28, 38. 

— Abydos, 39. 

— Karnak, 38. 

— Saqara, 38. 

SALVOLINI, 18. 

Sata, 189. 

Savages, habits of, worthless as evi¬ 
dence of ancient belief, 129. 
Sciaparelli, 20. 

Szedlo, 20. 

Seb, the earth, husband of the Sky 
and father of gods, 114. 

— a goose so named, 115. 
Sebekhotep, monuments, 46. 
Sebekhotep III., statue of, 46. 
Sechet, raging heat of the sun, 187. 
Sekenen-Ra, 36. 

Self-existence, 225. 

Semench-ka-Ra, statue of 46. 
Sepulchral rites, 129. 

Set, Darkness, 88, 114,116, 117. 

Seti I„ father of Rameses II., his 
sarcophagus, 209. 

Shadow, 156, 158. 

Shai, the divider, Fate, 166. 

Shu, the Air, 113. 

Smer, a priestly official, 33. 

Song of King Antuf, 72. 

— of the Harper, 72. 

— of the Oxen, 136. 

Souls, 154. 

— of Ra, 170. 

Spencer, H., 66, 132, 154, 156. 



INDEX. 


2 70 

Spinoza, 244. 

Stanley on Apis tombs, 248. 

— king’s divinity, 171. 

— Pyramids, 63. 

Stern, 20, 203. 

Sun, names of the : 

— Ra, 115. Osiris, 116. Horus, 118. 

— Ptah, Opener, Artist, .185. 

— Chnemu, Builder, 185. 

— Tmu, Closer, 186. 

— Chepera, Scarabaeus in his bark, 

198. 

— Sebek, Crocodile, 247. 
Suten-hotep-ta, 139. 

Symbols, 140. 

TANEN, 186. 

Tebha=Typhon, 118. 

Techu, meaning of, 120. 

Tefnut, goddess, the Dew, 113, 260. 
Tehuti, Thoth, the Moon, 120,124. 
Tehutimes IV., dream of, 162. 
Temples, 85. 

Thoth, 120. 

Thunder, roaring of a lion, 260. 

— bellowing of a bull, 260. 
Timokles, 3. 


Tmu, or Atmu, name of the sun, 88, 
206. 

Tomb, parts of an Egyptian, 122. 

Triads, world beneath the earth, 209. 

UNBU, son of Nu and Nut, name 
of Osiris, 115. 

Unnefer, name of Osiris, 212. 

Uranes, a celestial stream in the 
Tuat, 209. 

Usertsen (wrongly called Userte- 
sen), 44. 

Valens, edict against the monks of 
Egypt, 222. 

Wescher, 147. 

Wiedeman, 20, 36, 217. 

Wilkinson, 69,134. 

Xenophanes of Colophon, 3. 

Yama, 114. 

Young, 13. 

Zoega, 14. 

Zoolatry, 1, 245. 



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“ This singularly clear and catholic-spirited essay will command the 
attention of the theological world, for it is a searching inquiry into the 
very substance of Christian belief .”—Hartford Courant. 

“ This little volume may be regarded as virtually a primer of modern 
religious thought, which contains within its condensed pages rich materials 
that are not easily gathered from the great volumes of our theological 
authors. Alike in learning, style and power of descrimination, it is honor¬ 
able to the author and to his university, which does not urge the claims 
of science by slighting the worth of faith or philosophy.”— N. Y. Times. 

“ Topics of profound interest to the studious inquirer after truth are 
discussed by the author with his characteristic breadth of view, catholicity 
of judgment, affluence of learning, felicity of illustration, and force of 
reasoning. . . . His singular candor disarms the prepossessions of his 

opponents. ... In these days of pretentious, shallow and garrulous 
scholarship, his learning is as noticeable for its solidity as for its compass.” 
— N. Y. Tribune. 


*** The above book for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent , prepaid, upon 
receipt of price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 





Old Faiths in New Light 

BY 

NEWMAN SMYTH, 

Author of “ The Religious Feeling 

One Volume, 12mo, cloth, - $1.60. 

This work aims to meet a growing need by gathering materials of 
faith which have been quarried by many specialists in their own depart¬ 
ments of Biblical study and scientific research, and by endeavoring to 
put these results of recent scholarship together according to one leading 
idea in a modern construction of old faith. Mr. Smyth’s book is remark¬ 
able no less for its learning and wide acquaintance with prevailing modes 
of thought, than for its fairness and judicial spirit. 


CRITICAL NOTICES. 

“The author is logical and therefore clear. He also is master of a singularly 
attractive literary style. Few writers, whose books come under our eye, succeed in 
treating metaphysical and philosophical themes in a manner at once so forcible and so 
interesting. We speak strongly about this book, because we think it exceptionally 
valuable. It is just such a book as ought to be in the hands of all intelligent men and 
women who have received an education sufficient to enable them to read intelligently 
about such subjects as are discussed herein, and the number of such persons is very 
much larger than some people think.”— Congregationalist. 

“ We have before had occasion to notice the force and elegance of this writer, and 
his new book shows scholarship even more advanced. * * * When we say, with 

some knowledge of how much is undertaken by the saying, that there is probably no book 
of moderate compass which combines in greater degree clearness of style with profundity 
of subject and of reasoning, we fulfil simple duty to an author whose success is all the 
more marked and gratifying from the multitude of kindred attempts with which we have 
been flooded from all sorts of pens.”— Presbyterian. 

“The book impresses us as clear, cogent and helpful, as vigorous in style as it is 
honest in purpose, and calculated to render valuable service in showing that religion and 
science are not antagonists but allies, and that both lead up toward the one God. We 
fancy that a good many readers of this volume will entertain toward the author a feeling 
of sincere personal gratitude.”— Boston Journal. 

“ On the whole, we do not know of a book which may better be commended to 
thoughtful persons whose minds have been unsettled by objections of modern thought. 
It will be found a wholesome work for every minister in the land to read.” 

—Examiner and Chronicle. 

“ It is a long time since we have met with an abler or fresher theological treatise 
than Old Faiths in New Light, by Newman Smyth, an author who in his work on 
“The Religious Feeling/’ has already shown ability as an expounder of Christian 
doctrine.” — Independent. 


by 


*0* For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid, upon receipt of price , 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 

Nos. 743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 


680 















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